Stop (Blogging), In the Name of the Law

In the world of printed writing, there are many established laws concerning what can and can’t be done. The boundaries are generally clear, and these laws are widely known by those who take up a pen. But once those written blurbs move online, the law becomes a little bit fuzzier. Just ask Stephen Hogge, owner and operator of the blog HogOnIce.com.

Hogge found himself the center of a sticky legal situation after posting a blog that labeled an (allegedly) ex-girlfriend “a mentally ill alcoholic prostitute.” Apparently them’s more than fightin’ words. Them’s grounds for a lawsuit.

The woman in question, California resident Fatima dos Santos Fahmy, took issue with the maligning remarks. A graduate of Miami School of Law, Fahmy hauled Hogge into court. But the question quickly presented itself—where does one file a lawsuit of this kind?
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Learning From Blog Predecessors

If you’re looking to start a successful blog, you might find yourself a bit discouraged. Confronted with so many established blogs, an internet presence can seem like a difficult thing to establish among such stiff competition.

But before you get too down on yourself, let’s remember that there are a lot of ways to gauge the success of a blog. You can label yourself a success when you’ve secured an impressive list of subscriptions, a healthy amount of inlinks, or perhaps even the ability to follow trends within your niche topic.

Whatever benchmark you’re using to gauge success, don’t forget that every established blog has piggybacked and improved upon the blogs that have come before. With that in mind, here are a few tips and pointers to glean from trends among today’s most successful blogs.
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Blogging Killed the Newspaper Star

In 1979, the Buggles informed the world that video killed the radio star. Now, the question facing our generation is whether blogging will kill the newspaper star. As the catchy pop song taught us, the golden age of technology past is inevitably swept away for the glitz and glamour of the new.

In terms of print newspapers, this is beginning to ring eerily true. Even some of the most established newspaper conglomerates aren’t immune to the effects of online news sources. The New York Times, for example, has experienced a series of layoffs, increased prices at the newsstand, decreased readership, and stock market woes.
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Why Do We Blog?

Blogging seems like such an established part of the web experience that it’s easy to forget it’s only been in our lives for eleven years. If fact, if you’re on the hunt for the beginnings of the web log, you will eventually find yourself in April of 1997 at Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News. By our eyes, jaded with eleven years worth of blog improvement, this first post looks unimpressive.

Impressive or not, however, it would prove the catalyst that sparked an online revolution. And, somehow, that first post (nothing more than a small string of words and links) became the precursor to the more established, higher tech blogs of today.

But there is still a fundamental question at the bottom of the phenomenon—what made this odd viral form of information exchange take off so quickly and so pervasively? In light of our busy schedules and the time commitment it requires, why do we sit down at the end of the day to blog?
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Online Market Dominated by 30 and Under Crowd

Multi-million dollar businesses usually conjure images of men in power suits wheeling and dealing with the aid of brandy and cigars. But Armani suits may just have to make way for Abercrombie denim, because the online market has forever changed the face of high powered business endeavors. As we move further into a technological age, the 30 and under crowd continues to dominate some of our most well-known companies.

If you don’t believe it, look a little closer at the faces behind Facebook, YouTube, Mozilla, WordPress, and Digg. What do they all have in common? For one, each company has a net worth over $30 million. But a more telling similarity is that each entrepreneur has yet to see 31 birthday candles. And they’re not the only examples. Check out the Top 50 Entrepreneurs Under 30.

Right now, no one believes more in the moneymaking power of the internet than Johns Wu. He recently sold his blog, Bankaholic.com, for $15 million. And at the age of twenty-two, Wu is just one example of how the internet has opened entrepreneurial opportunities for web savvy youngsters.
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Political Relevance Depends on Internet

During election years, we all know people who magically become “political experts.” And with the constant inundation of debates, scandal, and mud slinging, it’s no wonder politics has become the constant fodder fueling our water coolers. But is politics the topic de jour only because it’s an election year? Or is there more to it? A recent list of the 25 most influential people on the web seems to suggest there’s a whole lot more.

Ranking in this list are both Arianna Huffington and Jon Stewart. Huffington is the mastermind behind the hugely successful political blog the HuffingtonPost.com, while Stewart is the host of the irreverent news show and associated website TheDailyShow.com.
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When Blogging Kills

There is no limit to just how much the internet has revolutionized our world. Not only has information become an immediately accessible commodity, but it has also changed the way people all around the world are working. Especially in the world of blogging, people are able to transform their homes into offices and effectively become their own bosses. While this sounds like every worker’s dream, for many people, home offices quickly become little else than digital sweatshops.

The internet never sleeps, and that means blog workers can’t either. Working in an entity that has no regard for time zones or exhaustion, bloggers constantly feel the pressure to report on the latest and greatest. That means even at the expense of personal health.
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