Jerry,

I didn't start any blogs until I saw the linkages that work well with Twitter, and to some degree, Facebook. For a long time they seemed like a way to let your material get ripped off or to publish stuff to personal to publish. But with Twitter, when you follow people who write interesting things (usually writers, scientists, computer geeks, some critics and media folks, and a few for humor or just plain interesting insights) then you have a conversation underway. I don't follow everyone who follows me, but I sometimes check in to see what they're doing, and will on occasion follow after a while. It comes and goes. The point is, we don't communicate solely in 140 characters, we usually have a sentence or some keywords and a link to an article, a web site, or a blog.

I have one to do with gardening, primarily, that covers organic subjects plus canine and natural history observations in the yard. I've been a member of an organic gardening group for years, and they overlap. And I put some more social and political and non-gardening stuff in the other one. I'm not posting links here because you didn't ask about my blogs in particular and I am not interested in shifting the topic to what I write about. It's enough to state that last year I contributed to several blogs (I also have one for work). I think they are growing in usefulness and sophistication as Twitter and other social media grow.

SRS