You have had a rough day. All you want to do is sit in front of your computer and unwind. You log on to your personal web blog and write endlessly about your day. Nothing serious happened, you just want to ramble, and typing on your blog is the perfect cure.

Since its start in 1999, web blogging is becoming increasingly popular. With the introduction of web blogging sites such as www.blogger.com and www.livejournal.com, users can share their thoughts, ideas and opinions freely.

Used as a personal journal, a web blog often consists of a mixture of a user’s thoughts, things noticed during the day, a reflection about the weekend, or a quick note on some subject. Many web blogs also contain Web site links, pictures, quizzes, or something the person found interesting that they care to share.

Internet blogs are usually updated on a regular basis and can help Web users get to know each other. Users are free to express themselves on the Web. Subsequently, their thoughts can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection. An internet scrapbook of sorts, blogs also enable the user to customize their page with different templates, fonts, colors, pictures, icons and quizzes taken on the internet.

The great thing about web blogs is that they require little to no computer experience. Users do not need to know HTML, or any other computer programming language. All someone needs is the desire to share their thoughts and ideas.

Valerie Smith, an English professor at Quinnipiac, who teaches creative non-fiction, requires her students to create and update a web blog.

“I had a blog, but I didn’t make it on my own. We had to create a blog and update it every Friday in my creative writing class,” said Gillian Gordon, a sophomore public relations major from Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. “We had to write about specific things and then share with the other students. Our friends and family had to read it too.”

According to an article published by the Columbia Journalism Review, www.pitas.com launched in 1999 as the first free build-your-own personal web blog. This is what started the rapid growth of diary style web blogging. Later that year www.blogger.com and www.livejournal.com were launched.

One popular web blogging site, www.livejournal.com, began as a hobby for creator Brad Fitzgerald in April 1999. Today the site has blossomed into a mass internet blog, with over 20 million accounts. In fact it grew so much that web blogging company www.sixapart.com purchased them at the beginning of this year.

A Six Apart press release says, “The acquisition of Live Journal makes Six Apart the industry’s largest independent provider of web blogging tools.” The Six Apart company also owns two other web blogging sites: www.movabletype.com and www.wordpad.com.

As popular as web blogging seems to be at the moment, many people still do not know about it. “I used to have a personal diary in the 8th or 9th grade, but that’s about it. I’ve never even heard about blogging, but it sounds cool,” said public relations sophomore Sophia Pantelides from Annapolis, Md. “Now that I know more about blogging, I would like to check it out.”

Although Live Journal enables its users to choose privacy settings (private, friend’s only or public), www.blogger.com, the site used in Smith’s class does not.

“I liked doing it, but I didn’t want my friends and family reading certain things,” said Gordon. After Smith’s class, she no longer uses www.blogger.com, but instead maintains a handwritten journal.

Out of everything available on the internet, it is the communication options that are used the most. Humans have a strong desire to communicate and web blogging is a good way to sshare your life with friends. Since web blogs have gradually been on the up rise, one can only wonder if handwritten journals will soon be obsolete.