This whole blogging thing is getting out of hand

I thought, since it's rather pertinent to what we're all doing here, that this would be interesting to share...

As I mentioned in my earlier post, being home is one of those glorious times that I get to catch up on the magazine reading I missed. Now that I'm here, I've decided to start with the most recent issue of Time Magazine (as opposed to, say, Budget Travel, Sunset or, the guiltiest pleasure of them all, Coastal Living--Lord how I love reading about sea-side homes and the accessories that accompany them!) to maintain at least some semblance of intellectual integrity...

One of my favorite Time features is the Numbers bar, where two figures on one issue are presented side-by-side in such a way as to lead one to a certain realization of said subject. Take this one on energy: "53%: Estimated increase in global demand for energy--mostly fossil fuels--by 2003. Developing nations, primarily China and India, are responsible for that growth. 2010: Year China is projected to overtake hte US as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide."

Today, there's one that has to do with--surprise!--blogs: "100,000: number of new blogs created each day, according ot hte blog tracker Technocrati, which estimates 1.3 million posts are added daily. 4,000: Number of blogs in the "bloggin elite", which have at least 500 other blogs linking to them."

Uhm, are you kidding me?? 100,000 new blogs a day?? Which also leads me to the question: has anyone now blogging here for class ever started a blog? It's so strange to have watched this phenomenon grow. I remember having an OpenDiary (does that still exist?) in middle school for about a month until I quit visiting it and OpenDiary deleted it. Even before that, I saw the digitalization of personal journals coming-- did anyone else have one of those small, pocket-sized contraptions with a QWERTY keybooard inside on which you could type (Sidekick-style) diary entries?

Is there a categorical difference between blogs and onilne diaries/journals? Because if not, I guess I also have to wonder what proportion of the 100,000 new blogs are personal in nature, and what proportion of new bloggers set out to create one of those 4,000 elites that have found a high degree of relevancy.