It all started around 1997 with a few Internet enthusiasts who would spend all day working on Web sites only to go home and continue surfing the Net and working on their personal projects.

As these early experts stumbled across interesting or useful sites, they started making lists of these sites, adding personal comments about what they found and publishing it to their Web pages. Eventually there were a few dozen people running sites that would catalog an Internet address, offer a brief description followed by their personal comments about other Web sites they felt were worth visiting or at least had something interesting to say.

These early catalogs of sites became known as Web Logs which was then shortened to just blogs. And, the people who created this type of content were called bloggers.

The entire process had a rather underground feel to it and the bloggers would pride themselves on finding unique information that would dispute main stream ideas or use their commentaries to pick apart mass media coverage and support their ideas with the sites they link to.

There was even an idea that blogs could create a new form of information dissemination driven by informed public instead of corporate interest. But, the concept never really advanced too far in this direction.

Things continued in this fashion until 1999 when a new concept changed the blog idea and ultimately evolved into the type of blogs we have today. This was the idea of creating a Web site dedicated to making it extremely simple for anyone to have their own blog space.

In other words, any novice Internet user could publish a blog. You didn't have to be a technical guru knowing all the intricacies involved with setting up and maintaining an html Web site.

One of the first to offer this idea was Pitas.com (www.pitas.com). In fact they are still around offering the free service. Just today I logged on, created my account and published a blog within a few minutes. They even provide a fairly unique address making it easy to find your personal blog. I was assigned the address (mgmdesign.pitas.com) for this test.

Pitas.com is based on the original Blog concept of cataloging and listing other sites therefore each entry requires the name and address of the site you want to share and your personal commentary about it.

While this is still common today, some of the most popular blogs have taken on a different, more loose format where people just post general information on a frequent basis. Almost more like a journal of daily activities or ongoing commentary, this new generation of blogs may not link to or comment on other sites at all.

While most will have a theme or topic that is followed, ease of use and the ability to do extremely fast updates are key to today's blogs.

One of the most popular sites for this style is Blogger (www.blogger.com). In fact, their entire service is based on making it incredibly simple and fast for anyone to post comments or thoughts and even provide some simplified basic formatting for what you publish.

Again, I had an account set up in just minutes and the basics were very straight forward. This interface felt much cleaner than Pitas.com and the design templates were more modern and professional. Like Pitas.com my Blogger test blog was also assigned a simple address: mgmdesign.blogspot.com.

So, with all this in mind, does it make sense for businesses to have their own blogs? I suppose, by definition, the wide open nature of what you can write about will allow us to easily imagine specific topics that clients and customers may find interesting.

For example, Google has developed a blog (www.google.com/googleblog) that covers everything from latest search engine news to events that Google employees participate in. And, from public and human relations standpoints I can see the value of it.

Or, if a business owner wanted to share the events of an exciting industry conference or cutting edge product development from the field it may be worthwhile to maintain a specialized blog for that short time period.

However, like the underground news blogs of the late 1990s, today's commentaries tend to have more of an after work entertainment feel than a professional outlet for company product or service announcements.

On the other hand, publishing timely and regularly updated information on your Web site is generally one of the dominant factors of a successful Web site.

Therefore, as a business owner and Internet expert, I believe an archived database of press releases or latest news section would be a much more professional solution for most businesses.

If you would like to explore more blog information, these sites offer directories of other blog sites as well as category listings:

Metafilter (www.metafilter.com): offers the old style chronological but otherwise random listing of blogs with Web site name, address and sometimes witty comments. Established in 1999.

WebLogs.Com (www.weblogs.com): lists other blog sites that have changed in the previous three hours from when you load their home page. Established in 1999.

Blogorama (www.blogarama.com): Well organized categories listing links to blog sites focusing on various topics. Established in 2002.

Eatonweb Portal (portal.eatonweb.com): Another blog index organized by category. Established in 1999 by indexing 50 known blogs. Today the site links to over 18970.