The Blogosphere
The Blogosphere: The next American Dream?
I'm sure almost everyone knows what the American Dream is and even more have watched a show related to it. If you have absolutely no idea, you might want to watch a cartoon movie series that is titled The American Dream (lol). However, it lacks the feature of picturesque images of the life of human beings, but instead the scriptwrites decided to play along with Disney's legendary Mickey Mouse character and thus created a story based on mice. These mice migrate to America to get the American Dream. What is it exactly? It's the land of opppurtunity. This phenomenon is becoming more and more apparent in the Blogosphere.
Firstly, the Blogosphere, for those of you who are not familiar with this term, means the part of cyberspace that encompasses the blogging community. Although you might have heard of the biosphere, which is a layer of the earth's atmosphere and is very real, the Blogosphere exists only in virtual reality. If one were to place it in the context of how we related the earth to the biosphere, it would be as if relating the Internet to the Blogosphere. Though, blogs are often held in a very stereotypical perception that is they exist to habituate some kind of underground community. Though, this is typically untrue because you will find ordinary people, nerds, techies and even academics as inhabitants of this purely virtual plain of existence. However, the boundary between reality and the Internet is being redefined daily and the Blogosphere is also one of the innocent contributors to this phenomenon.
The Blogosphere started out with just a few blogs (then known as web logs) that was a very primitive form and probably the first form of personal publications based on the net. I am not sure if there was a charge for the webhosting of this kind, but it soon turned out that a manifesto of web hosting companies sprouted up to fit this new trend sweeping across the globe as the digital age came to be. At first, there was not much idea to which the use of blogs could contribute to personal ideals other than those for companies and coorporations who wished to extend the PR contracts to cyberspace, where the call for immediacy was clearly met. The concept of public commenting started out with blogs, and instead of posting on forums and reading every inch of the debates going on, blogs held comments open for public view, without any registration process whatsoever. Convenience is the pinnacle of all achievements and blogging was one activity that commanded web hosts to supply it. After which, the ideal of personal publishing caught on and people liked the idea of being able to publish stuff online for free and with no restrictions to any content they wrote. It was as if someone has given them the green light to write anything they could do on the Internet, which at this point in time is almost anything. This made wonders for the blogging trend that soon swept through communities, "recruiting" bloggers as it went on. The thing is, blogging was such a great tool for catharsis that people soon got hooked up to it. However, it was not until recently that the cathartic effects of blogging were discovered. Perhaps it was just not highlighted? But whatever the reason may be, now the Blogosphere has turned into a gold mine for almost anything you can think of.
The Blogosphere offers people the ability to create community and an extremely vast audience reach. It's often the personal testimonies of people that are most remembered because it is those that people can relate to at a more personal level, and this serves a very good effect for a giving a sense of belonging. It's almost always the case that a potential client would spend hours reading through blogs of personal experience rather than sipher through tons of company websites, which are clearly tendered to serve the best for company image.
So what does the Blogosphere offer next? Well recently, the trend has caught up, and at an extremely alarming rate as well, for bloggers to serve as third party advertisers. I'm saying third party because companies do not directly pay bloggers to advertise for them, in exception of some special cases. But the routine blogger is not sought out by companies to become advertising bodies. However, there are companies which serve to create communities for bloggers to sign up and then volunteer to become third party advertisers. Of course, this is comes with certain rules and regulations. As in any advertising body, you have to make sure you're meeting the needs of your client or you'll have no business. Without a trade of money for services, there will be no transaction.
Imagine bloggers that could make a living of blogging. The mere thought of it seems ridiculous, but facts show that there are actually people doing this. Even more people are earning extra bucks by serving as advertising bodies for companies. Though, their content must fit a certain criteria before companies even take notice in them. For a blogger like myself, I have little notions of bringing extra bucks with this blog because it serves for purposes of my own. However, there are bloggers who are out here just for those big bucks. Their purpose is just to attract advertisers and readers so that the cash will just start rolling in.
My point: The American Dream started out just this way. The way that one single dream gives hope to others that are in the same situation. This dream could easily be some masquerade that leads people to things in life are just so easy to get. But still people follow it for that single ounch of hope that it squeezes out. It shows that hope can go a very, very long way.
Though, the future seems to put blogging in quite good light. People from many all sorts of professions are already embeded deeply inside the Blogosphere and this makes this region of cyberspace a very prominent aspect to invest in. The networking ideals are just tremendous, maybe even limitless. Even if it takes security and online commerce a few years to pick up, the doors are already open for reality to spill into the virtual world.
Whatever it may be, there are chances everywhere. Just make sure you're going for the right things in the right way. Most importantly, make sure you don't lose yourself. It's not worth even all the money in the world if you end up getting caught in the rat race and not being able to pull yourself out.
Don't become a zombie.
Stay alive.
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