By Biz Stone
I found this book quite interesting and as an avid blogger, I thought I knew everything about weblogs, but I still had a lot to learn about the blogging revolution.
When i first saw that half of the book was for beginners, i thought that this book might not be the best buy for me, but finally I got caught into it and learned a lot – from the starting chapters for beginners until the more advanced options of the last chapters.
The book gives a really good overview for starters (the invention of the www, blogging history, getting to know blogging providers, simple html guide for bloggers) and slowly get into more advanced topics such as generating income from your blog, design and typography advices, archiving options, group and corporate blogging, knowledge management, adding dynamic features, tips to increase traffic, syndicating your blog (something which I never really cared for until now, but which I found really interesting), and interviews with some well known people from the blogosphere. All this content is supported with 12 pages of useful web links all listed in the appendix. Everything is written in a casual and easy to understand approach (not the too often so-serious way, with techy terms that only top nerds can understand).
So far, I found this book to be a really good buy for beginners and intermediate
blog users.
And now, you might wonder why someone like me is so interested in blogs. This was also a mystery to me at the start, but I quickly understood that what fascinated me with the blog phenomena is the power of self expression for everyone – like you and me – which is brought to us with an amazing potential for expansion. I think writing is a powerful way of learning about yourself, and I truly believe that as long as people will write and express themselves freely, everything might just get better for them. As well as reading from other people’s points of view and confidences, we might finally realize that we are all the same, and at the same time all so different, like snowflakes. Blogs are more than simple publishing, they are alive. They take the character of the person who publish it and that makes the web not only the biggest knowledge base we had yet, but it gives it a soul.
I think weblogs expands everyone’s horizon and we are led to a phenomenal open mindedness, which is really needed these days. Who knows, blogging might be the next religion? (or the next addiction in my case 😉
Some websites of interest:
* Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content
* Companion website of this book
* Biz Stone, Personal weblog of the author
* Give Quick Use your affiliate program to send money to non profit organization, what a great idea…
Some books of interest (and probably my next readings):
* Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
* The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog
* Linked: The New Science of Networks