Introduction

A funny thing started happening right around the start of this century: A few programmers and geeky people in general started putting on their websites a running weblog of what was happening with them, what cool thing they had just stumbled over on the Internet, and even a few pictures of their family and cats. Nothing too important, nothing too disruptive, nothing to pay attention to, right? Wrong.

Seven years later, there are nearly 60 million blogs, and something like 30 million active bloggers, with the number of blogs steadily doubling every six months or so. You see, the people formally known as the audience, consumers, and likely voters have started hearing, reading, reacting, and conversing via blogs.

Today, blogging profoundly ...

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