Blogs Revisited

I want to share a little more information about blogs with whoever may read this. I have already talked about the history of the blog and how blogs have changed over time. I mentioned that the first blogs were usually lists of links followed by some sort of commentary, whether it is a response or critique, of the information contained in the related link. I mentioned how there are many, many different kinds of blogs today with many different formats as a result of the incredible ease in which a person can create a blog today. For example, many blogs follow the original format of links with some commentary about the ideas presented in the links, but still more blogs are simply online journals where bloggers can spill their guts. They can write anything that they want.
These two examples of modern blogs may seem quite different at first, but they share a commonality. They both likely contain links to sites of other blogs. In fact, this property of blogs that was so common in early blogs remains a staple of the blog today. The fact that blogs are usually obscure and difficult to find using a search engine further exaggerates the importance of the link as a tool for discovery in the blogging world today.
Links are how most blogs are discovered. They are the currency of the blogging community. The easiest way to find interesting blogs is usually to find a poplar blog and explore its links. Little known bloggers strive to get links to their blog onto popular blogs, and for good reason. Getting a link to your blog onto a popular blog is almost guaranteed to increase the number of hits that your blog will receive. Not only because of the number of visitors to the popular blog, but because of the reputation of the popular blogger. In general, blogs may be more similar to a spider’s web than THE Web itself since they are navigated largely by passing from blog to blog using links. What if popular blogs or archives charged a fee to post a link to blogs?
Another characteristic of today’s blogs is their tendency to form social alliances. This simply means that often bloggers will post links to other blogs in exchange for a link to their blog being placed on that blog. It makes sense because it benefits both bloggers. Both gain from any traffic that the other blog receives.