Web logs--so called after the manner of ship logs and now affectionately shortened to "blogs"--first appeared in the mid-1990s in the form of online diaries. Social scientists questioned what type of people would post intimate details of their lives for all the World Wide Web to see, but they may have wondered more about the folks who actually read them. It seemed like an unusual fad for the flashy and voyeuristic that would surely fade in time. Fast forward to 2010 and blogging is now a mainstream phenomenon that's here to stay. More than 75% of Internet users read blogs, according to market research firm Universal McCann. The Nielsen Co. said this translates into 10% of all Internet time being spent on blogs spent on blogs and social media sites. Data from 2007 from the research firms of Synovate and Marketing Daily reported that 8% of Americans write their own blogs, but that percentage has surely increased to well more than 10% by now. Web experts point out that blogging has evolved over the years to become much more interactive, with many blogs now featuring chat rooms and vast online communities. The din of all this chatter has reached corporate America, and companies are increasingly jumping onto the blogging bandwagon.
