A journalist Nightmare
 

But the latest development is for people to “blog”, putting their own, personal information on the Web for anyone to read, listen to or look at. Blogs can be of a professional nature, but more often than not, they contain personal information, views and experiences. A kind of private diary made public–available to millions of people all over the world. As Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, points out, “diaries once sealed under lock and key are now called blogs and posted daily [on the Internet] for all those who care to make the emotional investment.”

Richard Stengel writing in Time Magazine (December 16, 2006) points out that “there are lots of people who believe that this phenomenon is dangerous because it undermines the traditional authority of media institutions.” It certainly does that. Blogs give you a whole range of information, impressions and insights, from the sublime to the ridiculous, that would otherwise not be available to most people. Stengel continues, “journalists once had the exclusive province of taking people to places they’d never been. But now a mother in Baghdad with a videophone can let you see a roadside bombing, or a patron in a nightclub can show you a racist rant by a famous comedian.”

While blogs provide a vehicle to disseminate feelings, opinions and facts to millions of Web survers, they are essentially individual. The millions of blogs posted on the Internet have no set format or structure. But another phenomenon is now taking place on the Web. That of the social network site.