The Nicholls Worth

Issue date: 3/10/05 Section: Lagniappe

The online journal community seems to be growing every minute, from the number of actual sites to the people using them. An online journal is a web page that allows someone to post the events of their lives, and share pictures and music with others in the online journal community. A few of the most popular online diaries are Blog-City, Blogger, Diaryland, LiveJournal, TypePad and Xanga(netalert.net).

These journals appear to be popular among the high-school and college ages. People seem to enjoy letting things out, and this is a safer way to do it. Blogs or entries vary from one or two sentences to entire paragraphs of someone's ramblings. Each of the sites offers different ways for the users to express themselves. Users can customize their online journals anyway they like.

For example, on Xanga there are different "skins" one can choose from, and if someone want to pay to use this site there are even more options. A lot of the sites offer a free version, but upgrades are available .

Diaryland is aimed toward a younger group. The site is decorated with flowers and kitty cats with smiles. This site looks fun for a teenager who wants to write about the cute boy in the second row of her third period class (or 4M as college students would say).

Xanga, Blogger and LiveJournal are aimed at a more mature audience. All three have many features such as changing the appearance of the web log, making postings public or private and adding music to the page.

The other two Blog-City and TypePad, talk about news, movies and music. Not what happened at Rox's last night or who was fighting in the Library.

There are many more online journals to choose from. It really depends on what the user wants in their journal, and who they want to read it.

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