As if I’m any kind of expert on the matter…

First, some history. I started reading blogs some months before September 11, 2001. I was reading Michael Moran’s blog over at MSNBC.COM mostly but I’d occasionally read Glenn Reynolds and Eric Alterman, too. I thought it was interesting how they linked everything they were talking about but I didn’t fully grasp what a blog was at that time. These MSNBC blogs looked like ordinary columns except for the links. Then 911. I was consumed by the event as were most Americans and I started following links wherever they went and quite a few of them linked to blogs that were written by ordinary people, not journalists. These ordinary people were conveying their sense of the event in their own words. It wasn’t like they were put on the spot by someone suddenly sticking a microphone in their face and they weren’t filtered or edited by someone else. It was the real thing as told by the people who experienced it and it wasn’t just a few samples. There were mountains of stories from every imaginable point of view and they ran the quality gamut from pretty awful to extremely good. Amazing. I couldn’t get enough.

Inevitably, those early bloggers started writing about other things and doing lots of other things with their new medium. Some of those things, particularly posting images, intrigued me. One of my favorite photoblogs, lightningfield.com, says that self-publishing is the best part of the internet. Exactly right. I also wanted desperately to improve my writing so CrabAppleLane Blog (Shameless plug) was born in April 2003. I had then and still have zero expectations and goals. I have been in the black in that ledger since day one. I also decided to do it is as a sort of chronicle more so than a forum. Three and a half years later and that’s still my approach. I don’t expect a lot of people to read or comment on anything I have to say but it is delightful if they do. They have (Sometimes in numbers that I don’t understand) and it is greatly appreciated. For what it’s worth, I think my photography these last three and a half years has improved somewhat but I don’t think my writing has. Still, I like contributing to the noise.

Where all of this is headed is anyone’s guess but mine is that the amazing growth that we’ve been seeing these last two years will slow down but not completely stop. There are still a lot of people who have no idea what a blog is and that means there are lots of potential new bloggers. Finally, blogs are excellent and inexpensive vehicles for, well, just about anything … and that appeals to a lot of people, including me.