Jeff Lee wasn't a regular Internet surfer when he stumbled onto a humorous blog about a woman's travails trying to find the right paint at a home improvement store.

Lee, a St. Cloud father of three with his own knack for creative writing, laughed. And he got an idea.
"All of a sudden, a light bulb went on and I thought, 'This is something I could do,' " he said.

Lee started a blog called "View From the Cloud," featuring musings about his family and life experiences. A year and a half later, he attracts about 200 readers each week from as far away as Australia and regularly exchanges comments with about 30 other bloggers.

"It's very addicting to get into this whole social network," Lee said. "You meet people worldwide ... that you share something in common with."

Lee is part of a phenomenon that has grown at an astounding rate in recent years. The search engine Technorati is tracking 69.1 million blogs, a number that until recently was doubling about every six months, said Derek Gordon, vice president of marketing.

From news media to businesses to political observers to families, it seems everyone is finding a way to make the informal online journals work for their purpose — to inform, persuade, sell or just keep up with gossip.

But the rapid growth of blogs — and the fact that about half of bloggers abandon their Web logs within three months — has some wondering whether the trend has reached its peak. A recent article in PC Magazine suggested that blogs' heyday is over and their numbers will begin to decline.
Experts and local bloggers say the new craze probably won't go away anytime soon. But it's likely to evolve and perhaps give way to newer forms of online communication, such as podcasts and Web videos.

"When you look at the total amount of citizen media that is coming along truly every minute of every day, right now we are just not able to calculate it," Gordon said. "It is just overwhelming."

Easier access
The blog is a new form of a very old activity: documenting one's life experiences for others, Gordon said. High-speed Internet connections are becoming more ubiquitous and inexpensive, making writing and sharing online easier, he said.
"People find they have the means for multiple forms of expression and distribution that were never before available to the average person," Gordon said.

Only a handful of blogs enjoy large audiences, Gordon said. Those targeted to a special interest such as golf or parenting have smaller niche audiences, he said.

By far, the vast majority of blogs — about 99 percent — are written by people who are doing it for the "sheer love" of blogging, to keep in touch with far-flung family and friends or because they dream of breaking into the ranks of the super-popular blogs, Gordon said.

Most are not profound or even particularly interesting, he said, and their audiences are tiny.
"It's really just because they enjoy doing it," he said. "It's a nice way to document all of the small and large things that happen in your life."
Tracking news

It's ironic that the news media have jumped on the trend and decided they need to do blogs, said Nora Paul, director of the University of Minnesota's Institute for New Media Studies. In many ways, a blog is simply a column — something the media already were publishing, she noted.

Blogging allows average citizens to report the news — sometimes even ahead of the traditional media, Paul said. She cited the Web video of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann speaking to a church congregation that surfaced during last fall's campaign and quickly was posted on YouTube, the hugely popular Web site that features submitted videos.

"There's no place that's private for people in the public eye anymore," Paul said.

Bloggers also were credited in 2004 with exposing accuracy problems with a CBS News story about President Bush's National Guard record. Bloggers have started watching the traditional watchdogs, the media, Paul said.

The audience for any individual blog is very small but very interested, Paul said. Like the demise of network television news, blogs signal the end of mass media, the idea that there's "one channel that's going to hit everybody and everybody's interest," she said.

"There's going to be a lot of channels that appeal to a few people," Paul said.

New marketing tool
Businesses are finding ways to incorporate blogs into their marketing strategies, said Scott Hondl, senior account executive with the Johnson Group Marketing of St. Cloud, which designs business Web sites.

Blogging comes up "in every conversation we have about online communications," Hondl said.

"It opens up the lines of communication to the business's customers," he said. "It kind of breaks down those walls. It gives them a direct contact … a chance to be part of that company."

While many corporate blogs are designed to be read by retail customers, some are geared toward potential or current investors, he said.
One such site Hondl's company recently completed was for Barrier Technology of Watkins, which makes nonflammable building materials.
Blogs have potential drawbacks for businesses, Hondl said, providing dissatisfied customers a forum to vent.

"You can kind of create this group of people who are complaining about the products," he said. "It goes both ways."

Hondl's company advises clients not to allow automatic postings after their blogs, but to screen them first to avoid spam or negative comments.
Some companies have come under fire recently for their so-called "flogs," or phony blogs that appear to be written by an average person but are really corporate-sponsored.

Wal-Mart got heat last year after two RVers traveled the country, camping in Wal-Mart parking lots and writing positive comments about the company in their blog.

It was later revealed that Wal-Mart had paid for their trip.

While it's been mainly large corporations behind the high-profile flogging cases, the trend probably will trickle down to smaller companies soon, Hondl said.

"It's really guerrilla marketing," he said. "What we're seeing is people are thinking about those things more."

Technorati is concerned about flogs tainting the credibility of all bloggers, Gordon said. The company uses software to suppress spam and sniff out illegitimate sites.

It also relies on the blogging community to be self-correcting. Often bloggers themselves are "the best sleuths," he said.

Local enthusiasts
Local bloggers say that contrary to reports of the blog's inevitable demise, their audiences are growing.

King Banaian, an economics professor at St. Cloud State University, publishes the "SCSU Scholars" right-leaning political blog that has about 300 regular readers. Interest in his blog — like most of those dealing with politics — increases during elections and slides off afterward, he said.
"I think these things just go in cycles," Banaian said.
The demand for any blog is elastic, Banaian said, and can fluctuate if a blogger posts a story that draws attention.

"What you're hoping is that they'll stick around," he said.

Gary Gross of St. Cloud started his conservative blog called "Let Freedom Ring" in November 2004.

He got interested in blogs in part after reading postings from Ukrainians during their country's revolution in 2004-05.
"It was part of history being written as we watched," he said.

Gross said his blog attracts 250-300 hits a day. Many are people in government because he writes about current events; others are from other countries because he writes about foreign policy.
Lee, Banaian and Gross all say they have no plans to stop blogging in the near future.

"I expect I'll do it for a while longer," Banaian said. "I'm getting a circle of friends who are smarter and smarter, and the blog's helped me to find them."