Perhaps the most exciting things since Email are blogs.  A blog or weblog, as it was initially known, can be defined as a personal website, usually not for commercial reason, that uses a log format to display its entries.  Typically it is the most recent entries that appear on top with the older ones following below.  A blog is updated constantly and often each blog is based on a certain topic, such as, politics, cinema, sports etc.  

It is believed that the first blog did not appear till 1993.  Jorn Barger coined the term ‘weblog’ in 1997.  In 1998 blogs were still new and used only by a handful of people.  However, as happens so often with technology, the trend became popular almost overnight.  By 1999 the media recognized the independent nature of blogging and free weblog-creation programs established blogging as an extremely popular hobby.  

As it became more popular, the way blogs were used also began to change.  Blogs started as an exchange of links and references that provided different opinions on matters.  But soon blogging started sharing some features with online journals.  Purists say that the fundamental difference between blogs and online journals is that blogging is used to log information about activities that are happening on the world wide web, where as, online journals keep a log of the ‘real world’.  This definition is blurring, however, and bloggers writing about their day-to-day life and opinions is rather common. 

Blogs work as excellent filtering tools.  Since blogs share links, readers of blogs often find that blogs are a hotpot of useful, interesting, noteworthy or entertaining links.   Blogs have also become a hub of alternative viewpoints and fresh outlook on news and other information coming from mass media. 

But the reason blogs have become tremendously popular has to be because of the fact that anything can be posted on blogs: day-to-day events, opinions, rebuttals, essays, memories or even a simple passing comment.  It is this flexible and friendly nature of blogs that is making them all the more popular in today’s information laden world.