Over 100 Million Blogs!

A recent Chicago Tribune article states there are now 109.2 million blogs. That's one for every 151 people, or one for every 23 people with internet access. Gosh - yes, you do need internet access to view blogs.

No one has time for that much reading, and apparently a lot of blog owners don't have time to write them either. Statistics show over 99 percent of blogs are static that means no updates and no visitors. "a state of total or near-total obscurity," the article states.

If you're a blogger, remember why you are writing: to give readers something of value. So your commitment and obligation are to keep your content fresh and informative. Otherwise, blogging may fade away - and that's trouble for the good ones as well as the bad.

And yes, internet is now spelled with a lower case i. After all, it's the internet, not God. This is the editorial point of view from Wired magazine when they stopped capitalizing internet a few years ago:

From Wired.com:

It's Just the 'internet' Now

Tony Long 08.16.04 | 8:14 AM

"Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet.

At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net.

Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.

True believers are fond of capitalizing words, whether they be marketers or political junkies or, in this case, techies. If It's Capitalized, It Must Be Important. In German, where all nouns are capitalized, it makes sense. It makes no sense in English. So until we become Die Wired Nachrichten, we'll just follow customary English-language usage. (Web will continue to be capitalized when part of the more official entity, World Wide Web.)

Still, the decision wasn't made lightly. Style changes are rarely capricious, since change plays havoc with the editor's sacred cow, consistency.

But in the case of internet, web and net, a change in our house style was necessary to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television.

This should not be interpreted as some kind of symbolic demotion. Think of it more as a stylistic reality check."