Before any analysis can be done of geographically located blogging, the significance of blogging itself must be established. Blogging is a phenomenon that has exploded in popularity over the past five years. Rebecca Blood's 2000 article, ``weblogs: a history and perspective,'' traces the culture back to a list of twenty-three sites published by Cameron Barrett in early 1999. At the time of publishing, these ``weblogs'' were mostly links and commentary. Blood reminisces that, ``It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron's list, and most interested people did'' (Blood). The number of such sites quickly grew, and over the course of the next year several sites opened up that offered free tools for individuals who wanted to start their own blogs. Today these tools are easy to use and available to any individual who wishes to have their thoughts and opinions available online. This accessibility is key to the power of the blog format.
Blogs are culturally significant because they provide a avenue for any individual to voice their beliefs. Blogs undermine corporations and government by leaving them out of the equation. No longer must an article be published in a national magazine or newspaper in order to be read by a diverse mix of influential people. Today that same readership can be acquired by anyone: just publish it to a blog, and a tangled web of links and referrals will propagate it around the globe on the strength of the argument, not the reputation of the platform. Blogs provide decentralized power to individuals. Today, when major news happens, blogs are often the first place to find first-person accounts and true stories of the events unfolding. When New York suffered its blackout last year, some of the most interesting coverage came from blogs, where snapshots and stories gave a much more human feel to the story than could be obtained via traditional TV news coverage. One blog would link to others, creating a tapestry of accounts richer and more representative of real life than any one individual's account could possibly be. Though the sites involved might never have heard of each other before, in this sort of historic event their paths would intertwine to form a collective of stories.
This collective aspect has been highly important from the beginning, and the group identity it can create is a key component of geographically situated blogs. Evolved from Cam's original list of weblogs is the modern day blogroll, where sites list other blogs that they read or associate with. Through the sites they link to, bloggers thus attempt to situate themselves in a complex web of relationships. Blood writes that, ``It was, and is, fascinating to see new bloggers position themselves in this community, referencing and reacting to those blogs they read most, their sidebar an affirmation of the tribe to which they wish to belong'' (Blood). For a blog focused on its real world surroundings, that tribe is often the community of local bloggers who are doing much the same sort of thing. In this way the bloggers create a sort of group identity. Though they rarely mention this identity, and may not even have given conscious thought to it, they are still a part of it. Their voices position themselves inside the group while at the same time adding new dimensions to it, further enriching the collective.
An important aspect of the location-specific blog is the shared context it can provide between the writer and his audience. This context is vital to making the content relevant to the reader. On a sports site, the shared context might be football. On a technology news site, the context might be a love of computers. In any case, this context is what makes the information interesting and important to the reader. Geographically located blogs are able to use their locale as the shared context that makes relevant topics that might not otherwise be of interest to the reader. I don't particularly care about a story written of a night out in Toledo, but when a site like blogging.la writes of some resturant in Silver Lake, I read it. Even if I've never heard of the place or have no real intention of going there, the local context gives me a reason to continue. Geography contextualizes what the writer has to say into a frame of reference that the reader is in a position to relate to and understand. Because I identify with the context of LA bloggers, what they write is immediately of interest to me.
Pictures of people and places are similarly made interesting by the shared context between creator and consumer. A trend just starting to explode, the moblog, emphasizes what is happening right now by allowing people to post pictures directly from their cell phones, without any need to return to a computer first. The moblog trend has an inevitable slant toward being location specific. Unlike normal internet posts, which could concern events happening on any corner of the globe, snapshots are inherently tied to a location. Snapshots of day to day life ground a site in its physicalities, whether the rest of the content would do so or not.
A blog, when it includes real-world elements, helps weave the tapestry of life in an environment. It can provide a window into seeing how other individuals experience the same events that impact onto my life.