Blogs: For everyone, by anyone, about anything

Blogs have flourished and grown into a powerful new medium in the past decade. The purposes of these online writing platforms are wide and varied, just like their intended audiences.

There are blogs for gossip, news and music; cats, knitting and cars. There is a platform for any niche and every interest.

So how do we wade through the text? How does a blog gain an audience and how does the audience find the blog? In order to investigate this, I will analyze a specific blog for its tone, function and content.

The transit department in Miami created a blog which reaches out to Florida residents about matters that apply directly to the area or random facts that may be of interest.

Miami residents are encouraged to interact and contribute to the website in order to better serve the community. The transit department posts information about construction sites or damaged roads that may impact commuters. The community can help by keeping the transit department up to speed with recent events.

The blog is arranged in a manner similar to many news sites with simple, straightforward headlines, numerous images and concise body copy. This makes the blog appear more reliable and more accessible to Web surfers.

The difference between this blog and actual new sites it the tone of the writing. This is a more informal writing style, yet still provides the information the public needs. I think the conversational tone in the blog is one major reason why this presentation would be more successful than a straight news site.

For information that is helpful, but not extraordinarily vital, a more conversational tone can attract more eyes.

This is just one example of the millions of blogs created everyday. Tomorrow will bring another million or so new options, but only the most interesting, most accessible and most updated blogs will thrive in the digital world.