The rise of the bloggers

Long gone are the days when people would stand on their soapboxes and shout their opinions to the world - or at least to the passersby who bothered to stop and listen. Or to heckle them.
Back in the 19th and 20th centuries, the most famous place for soapboxers to gather was in Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park. But standing on a corner on a soapbox is a thing of the past, having been replaced by that platform known as the internet.
The soapboxers have evolved into bloggers, and their hecklers are the ones who leave comments on their blogs. Never before have we had such easy access to millions of people from the comfort of our homes. Just ask the soapboxers of old.
According to wiredpen.com, a social media website, we have the online diarist Jorn Barger to thank for coining the term "weblog". That was in 1997. Nearly two years later, Netscape launched the world's first blogging tool. But it wasn't until 1999 that Peter Merholz, a computer programmer, shortened weblog to blog.
Blogpulse, a website set up by The Nielsen Company to monitor blogs around the world, says there are 165,654,209 blogs in the world today - and it's growing fast.
That's a lot of opinions and thoughts floating around cyberspace. But not all bloggers are lucky enough to make it. Some of us will slog away on our blogs for little or no return, perhaps dreaming one day that we'll become the new Perez Hilton, who, as it happens, makes millions of dollars a year by blogging about scandal-hit celebrities.
But what about bloggers in the UAE? They have a long way to go before they catch up to the likes of Hilton, but still, they are passionate about what they do and are beginning make a decent living from them.
Read more in our cover story this week: http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/personal-finance/virtual-entrepreneurs-work-hard-for-real-world-success