Blogs in today's society

Hello everyone!

I suddenly felt like coming to write something down so here I am- I believe many feel like that when it comes to blogging in today's society. Blogging, an online diary or journal has become a very convenient place for recording everyday matters, things of interest, post photos and discuss about it etc. Indeed, the Internet has played a very large role in creating the culture of blogging. Not to forget we still have our good old diary, but blogging is definitely widespread in these days.

Wanted to kick off the class blog with a rather lighthearted post so I wanted to discuss something that many will be able to relate to, and in this case blogging. :)

I am pretty amazed that blogging culture is not just regular spaces for writing, but also, it as turned into sources of income, and even made some little celebrities. Of course, in Singapore, we have the famous Wendy Cheng a.k.a Xiaxue whom I think many (probably girls) would know about.

Xiaxue has about 40,000 people visiting her blog per day and from a nobody, she's now a mini celebrity who people know and even ask to take photos when they see her. I personally like her too and go to her blog regularly because I like how she's open to talking about controversial issues like plastic surgery and doesn't really care about haters except when they irritate her so much she does posts about them which can be pretty amusing. Did I mention she's funny and amazing at photoshop yet? Her photos are one of the highlights of her blog too, I feel. Slowly but surely, she built her readership.

This led to her winning the the Most Influential Blog and Region's Best Blog in Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards 2011 (napbas). Countries in the region include Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, China, Hongkong and Australia by the way :) You can read about her post about napbas here.

The napbas awards bring me to the next point of how developed the blogging culture is because not only is Singapore involved, so are countries around the region. And Nuffnang, a blog advertising community, has grown to be so successful with the aid of the blogging community from all over the region. Bloggers earn cash when they put the advertisements on their blogs, and the amount depends on how many clicks the advertisements get. Also, bloggers earn money from doing advertorials when companies approach them. This can range from online blogshops, to renowned brands like ZA (cosmetics) as in Xiaxue's recent post.

I find it really amazing that people like Xiaxue live by their blogs because of the development of blogging as part of people's lives, and reading others' blogs as a regular activity online. Blogging has even allowed her to live solely on writing her blog, thanks to the advertisments put on her site, as well as advertorials she does. I wish I could too (haha). While Xiaxue is one of the more famous bloggers of lifestyle, a whole range of type of bloggers are out there on the Internet. Others may include Lady Iron Chef, a Singapore food blogger (it's actually by a guy named Brad Lau), Kinmun Lee, or more often known as Mr Brown, who talks about everyday life and makes parodies (podcasts) of current issues some times, or celebrity blogs like Joanne Peh etc.

With that I conclude this post, still extremely awed at how much a simple site can be because of the culture and standing of blogging in our lives. Blogging can indeed reach out to the masses and especially those of the younger generation because of how much we use the Internet in our lives. Brands recognize this and have blogging as an alternative to regular media like commercials on TV and print ads to reach out to various target audiences. Yay I managed to use all three words of the name of our module hehe. I really hope you all enjoyed this post :)


- Mabel Yeo :)