50 Most Powerful Blogs

The 50 Most Powerful Blogs website attempts to prove that blogs have soared in popularity and can affect people's opinions and views.



Gossip, news, opinion- they all are out there. I think that blogs can have a negative and positive effect. Gossip blogs, for example, are a waste of space. I understand that people want to know what their favorite celebrity is up to or what the latest scandal is, but come on, gossip blogs can be full of lies and rumors.



Personal blogs rank right up there with gossip blogs. Do we really need a play-by-play about how someone woke up and then walked the dog? No, that is what Facebook or MySpace or Xanga is for. Blogs should be used for sharing news and important information that has an effect on us.



News blogs, on the other hand, might be one of the greatest inventions of the Internet. They allow people to seek out things that matter to them and to hear other people's views on the subject rather than just the journalist who wrote the article in the paper that day. A group with the same views can converse from all parts of the world and allow an international perspective, which is sometimes an enlightening and refreshing experience.



I realize that blogs are free of gate-keepers and all the rules that have dragged newspapers so far into the gutter are eliminated when anyone can write about topics regarding the government or economics or anything of the sort, but maybe there should be certain expectations and rules. Maybe gossip blogs and personal blogs should be eliminated to relieve social blogging of useless nonsense.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs