Happy Birthday, Blogs!

Has it been a decade since blogs first emerged? Er, yes. I honestly can't remember when exactly I started blogging as such. Maybe someone out there can let me know. I recall blogging the 2000 election campaign, and think of June 2000 as my blog-birth. That means I'm entering my eighth year of daily dishery. Oy. Anyway, Oxblog thinks it's all been a fantastic success:

The Internet's most powerful property is its capacity to connect users quickly to exactly what they are looking for, including high-quality writing on any subject.

This accounts for the tremendous amount of traffic high-quality blogs receive and explains why these bloggers are print journalists' true competition. As technology expert Paul Graham argues: "Those in the print media who dismiss online writing because of its low average quality miss the point. No one reads the average blog."

Once this capability of the Internet is taken into account, the significance of blogging shifts. Imagine that only 5 per cent – or 75,000 – of daily posts are journalistic in content, and that only 1 per cent of these are of high quality. That still leaves 750 high-quality posts published every day.

Even by this conservative assessment, the blogosphere still yields a quantity of content that can challenge the world's best newspapers.

What would I rather be doing? A lucrative op-ed column or a blog that racked up 3 million page-views this month? Put it this way: no regrets.