You're what? Flogging?

I've been trying to tout my blog ever since I started making an appearance here last month and many in the community have responded with blank stares and the question, "Now, what is that exactly?" One computer-less Bulletin reader asked me to fax the blog to him.

I don't blame the hesitant ones. Blogs -- often associated with technology and the younger generation -- can sound intimidating to those not young or tech savvy. But it's not that new of a phenomenon.

My colleague David Allen (an obscure columnist, it's okay if you've never heard of him) wrote in today's column about reaching his one-year mark of writing a daily entry on his blog. I tried writing a daily entry when I started but stopped after reaching three days.

Blogs, or Web logs, have been around for nearly a decade now but they only got popular five years ago and really popular two years ago. When I started working for the Bulletin in 2005, former Rancho reporter Conor Friedersdorf managed the immigration blog Beyond Borders.

Now there are more than 100 million blogs out there, most of them, as my former journalism professor once said, are only read by the blog's author and the blogger's mother. I could only be so lucky. My mother, like the reader who wanted me to fax my blog, is computer-less.