Blogs help spread the word about many subjects - such as unrest in Burma

The word was created by Jorn Barger to describe what he was doing with his pioneering Robot Wisdom web page.

The word was an abbreviation for the "logging" of interesting "web" sites that Mr Barger featured on his regularly updated journal.

A decade on and blog-watching firm Technorati reports it is tracking more than 70 million web logs.

Fast growth

While many people maintained regular journals or diaries before the word was coined, 1997 marked the point when they started to become a particular online pursuit.

For some time after Mr Barger coined the term, the numbers of people who could be said to be actually writing one was small.

Official numbers are hard to find but some estimate that the size of the blogosphere in late 1998 encompassed only 23 sites.

In 1999 the phenomenon took off as easy to use tools started to appear which made it much easier to write and maintain these sorts of websites. Also in 1999 the word "blog" was coined as a shortened form of the original term.

Social sites such as MySpace have grown out of blogging

Many blogs, then as now, specialised in one subject and kept those interested up to date with new sites or up-to-date information about developments or breakthroughs in that field.

Many bloggers attach comments to the web links they post and many become well-known for their particular view of events or way with words.

Technorati, which keeps an eye on the blogosphere, estimates that there are now 120,000 new blogs being created every day. Posts are being added to blogs at a rate of 17 per second - a total of 1.5 million per day, says the firm.

Not all blogs are now about what people find online. Many people, artists, industry figures and professionals, use them to keep people up to date with their movements or thoughts.

The rising popularity of social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo has arguably grown out of the blogging phenomenon.