10 Things We Learned About Blogs

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Men may have taken the lead in the early (read: geeky) days of blogging, but that's not the case now. According to a survey of more than 4 million blogs by Perseus Development, 56% were created by women. More bad news for the boys: men are more likely than women to abandon their blog once it's created. Call blogging a 21st century room of one's own. GO TO: blogsisters.blogspot.com

Candidates Love Blogs

O.K., so Howard Dean never wrote his blog. But his campaign workers posted a surprisingly intimate online diary of life on the road, and Dean had collected $20 million in contributions via the Internet alone by the end of January 2004. It didn't take long for other politicos to catch on. When New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer announced that he was running for Governor this month, he did so on his blog.

GO TO: blog.deanforamerica.com spitzer2006.com

Pets Have Blogs Too

It started as an in-joke among feline-friendly bloggers: why not post pictures of their cats every Friday afternoon? Friday catblogging became a hit, and soon even NASA was playing along by posting pictures of the Cat's Eye nebula.

GO TO: carnivalofthecats.com

Anyone Can Do It

Blogs wouldn't be such a democratic medium if they weren't so easy to set up. The most popular service, Blogger, owned by Google, boasts features like push-button photoblogging. Microsoft has launched a trial version of its own blogging service.

GO TO: blogger.com spaces.msn.com

Time.com

10 Things We Learned About Blogs

Radio had its golden age in the 1930s. In the 1950s, it was television's turn. Historians may well date the golden age of the blog from 2004 when Merriam-Webster.com's most searched-for definition was blog. How long can it last? Who knows? Here's what we discovered about the new medium this year