Ever since the introduction of blog development tools like Blogger, Pitas etc. in 1999, the personal publication tool weblog or simply blog has undergone many transformations. In the infant stages, until 2001, blogs were viewed as personal publishing platform where one can post his or her experiences, complaints, happy moments and pet peeves. Since it world business community has identified the potential of blogs to harness as a powerful marketing tool. Today blogs dont confine to letters and words. You can find photo blogs (where one can publish photos), audio blogs, also called radio blogs where users can download and listen to audio messages or music and video blogs or vlogs where video files are published.

Majority of blogger platforms today allows the users to publish syndication feeds (RSS or Atom). The feeds are especially helpful for ardent blog readers to keep in touch with the latest updates of a blog be it anything like photo blogs, radio blogs or video blogs, the user can get the latest content via a desktop based feed reader or a web based feed reader like Google Reader.

There is an estimated 35 million blogs worldwide and the number is fast increasing. The main reason people becoming bloggers is that they need little knowledge about HTML or any software. They can publish to the photo blogs or radio blogs (audio blogs) via a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. The blog platform will do all the necessary background actions.

The taking over of Blogger (blogger.com) by Google is the biggest turning point in blogging. Blogger.com allows bloggers to not only publish their posts, but also allows them to publish their own ads, to experiment with the template. Ads by the supported platform is absent in blogger blogs. Typepad is another blog platform that individuals and companies use.

Companies see blogs as excellent method of attracting and retaining visitors. Google blogs are the biggest example of corporate blogging. Each and every updating about the company is published in department blogs and the subscribers of news feeds can see the updates as and when it occurs.

There are many attempts to cash in on the enthusiasm of bloggers. Almost all companies now promote affiliate marketing through blogs and blog advertising is fast picking up. Bloggers make use of the pinging service by technorati, blogot etc. Pinging service tell search engines that new content is available at the blog. Pinging and newfeeds keeps the search engines busy visiting the blog.

Bloggers that publish text blogs, photo blogs, radio blogs or audio blogs and video blogs enjoy the democratic nature of the blogs. There are no editorial content and interaction with the readers is easy because of the comment feature. Blogging has emerged here to stay. And it will be the medium through which companies sell their products and services in the future.

Copyright 2006 Andreas Obermueller