Journaling Versus Blogging

While journaling shares several characteristics with blogging in general, many bloggers still consider these to be two different activities. A journal, being regarded more like a personal diary, would have little functional resemblance to those blogs that publish gossip about movie stars and sports figures or follow the public record of politicians. Even though the journal is online and others can read it, it tends to be viewed as more private than a regular blog.

One difficulty with definitions stems from the blurring of lines between a personal blog and one obviously geared toward public consumption. Some personal blogs that clearly wouldn't count as journals would be those dealing with books, recipes or pets. There's no denying that personal details of one's life appear in such web-logs, but those simply augment the main topic. Even posts about one's children might be less about family life than about sharing helpful experiences with other parents. One thinks of journaling as something done primarily for one's personal growth. Others might be able to read the entry, but the emphasis is on the writer's self-expression and reflection on their own life.

This means that if they are journaling, they will need slightly different tools than those used by others when blogging. They may want to consult one of the websites that have now sprung up to offer daily prompts to get journal writers thinking and writing. On their own blog, they might need to lock some entries from public view. This feature makes sites like www.livejournal or www.wordpress attractive, since they allow private posts while a host like www.blogger.com does not. On the other hand, the writer probably won't want to make monetary gains from the blog, so a hosting site that doesn't allow advertising won't inconvenience them. They might want a blog that allows photographs as well. Those won't necessarily be public photos, but the writer may want them there, to associate with personal experiences.

The types of entries made in journaling are different than those made in a more public blog, meaning that the basic requirements of the writer will differ as well. Their needs may vary from something that allows less complicated blog entries, like the Diaryland site, or a place where they can play and write more elaborately, like WordPress. Often this more personal blog will even be hosted on the same site as a public gossip blog, yet the two will be almost nothing alike. One serves a very public purpose, while the other is for personal contemplation.

Related topics about journaling
Finding Top Blogs On Any Topic
In addition to Technorati, with its general Top 100 list, or its lists for individual topics, sites like Wikio perform similarly. For example, under Wikio's "Top blogs – Politics" category, you might again see the Huffington Post at the top. Each blog below has an up or down arrow that shows whether it's trending upward or downward.

Lost Blogs And Data, Lost History
On a smaller scale, blogs themselves are constantly vanishing, as people move them to new servers, start new ones, or simply stop updating altogether. Members of a blogging community, having no other way of knowing the person, lose touch and may never discover what happened to their friend. The blog posts sit there until the host site archives them or deletes them for inactivity, and the person is gone from online history.

The World of Video Blogging
Just as people have settled comfortably into maintaining their text-based blogs, along comes video blogging to expand the medium yet again. Now there is a dimension that can be achieved that goes beyond the static blogs of text and photographs. Videos add vivid life to the information and opinion presented on a blog, thus creating a bridge between the once separate worlds of text and film.