I recall "blogging" being born out of the first Content Management System (CMS) switched from being used to operate a whole website to being used by just one user. It may have come about in some other way, but that's not really important. What I'm driving at, though, is that in those days it was the most casual, uncommitted kind of writing/ranting, which noone took for anything else.

Of course there were people writing long before they started doing it with dynamic pages, just by composing static html and publishing it. But that's not blogging, blogging is closely tied to the idea that you have dynamic pages, which allow you to easily publish new content from anywhere, and allow you to receive comments. For anyone to create static html, there is a bit of a barrier to it, it almost seems like there should be a purpose to it. As such, html scribbling never was as widespread as blogging. Blogging made this so incredibly easy that people who had things to say, but never would even consider touching "the geeky stuff" were empowered. And it is so easy that you can effortlessly rant and rave without ever having to do any work to publish it or lay it out on a page. Consider that the way in how you use something impacts how (and for what) you use it. That's what blogging has changed.

But the status of the blogger has changed too, since then. Beyond the Atlantic, "the bloggers", as they are called by the media, have become a political entity with some influence. It's strange to hear about "the bloggers" in that context, because I'm "a blogger" too and I have nothing whatsoever to do with that. Blogs aren't about people's lives anymore, they are political influence, social commentary, artistic and commercial promotion, they are all kinds of things. Which is why you see stories like "Bloggers can make money, but most keep day jobs" and it looks out of context. Why wouldn't they? What is it that they do that is so valuable to society that it becomes their job? That's the thing, some people take blogging seriously. Which is something I've never done. :P

Does "blogging" actually mean something else now? Are bloggers actually writers with a lesser title? If you're a writer I can understand that it's your job.