The Lipstick Page Forums Beauty Blog: The Blog Trend The Blog Trend Posted by Dain, Friday, July 15, 2005 4:40 PM (Eastern) Actually, I never thought I'd be writing an article on this, but I am... This is a phenomenon that has been on the rise for only a few months—literate and fashionable women have been setting up blogs. Colleen is far more web-savvy than I, and I pride myself on being a leetle tech, and she hit the nail on the head, long before I did... ohh... two weeks ago. Blogs are the new revolution on the internet. I mean... now even NBC Nightly News anchorman Brian Williams has a blog! (And he mentioned it on Conan O'Brien last night... talk about mainstream!) I've been a long-time blogger. My first post dates from June 2001. In the chronological parlance of the web, that's tantamount to a decade (web time isn't linear, it's exponential). I must have reams of words just piled up... debris from my late teenage years (like I'm so old now, har har). I belong to an older body of bloggers, for whom blogs remain personal journals—and I've never cared to read them, even of those I know well. I write mostly for my own enlightenment and pleasure, and though I realize most people are more guarded, reading their blogs has always smacked unpleasantly of listening in on someone else's conversation for that reason. Not quite an invasion of privacy, but it is rather like that mildy embarrassing moment when you catch someone talking to herself. Plus, few blogs are really worth reading. Democratization of voice equals democratization of everything else, including opinions tasteless, petty, stupid, and poorly written. Nuthin' really wrong with that, in the abstract, but one's got to have her eyes peeled for the diamonds in the rough, a very different process from reading a book or magazine—which are polished, professional pieces with salaried editors to ensure... Well, even then it's not a faultless process, is it? Blogging has turned out to be a brilliant tool for publishing, and easy to use too. You don't need to know HTML, you don't need webspace and FTP capability (they provide), and everything is neatly and automatically catalogued and archived. You can save drafts, and there are comments, too, so there's plenty of room for resentment and fuzzy luv (sorry, eprops give me the creeps). Simple. Neat. Anyone can do it. And if not, people can help. So now, people create blogs with a more narrow focus. It's no longer what's-going-on-in-my-life, but rather I'm-an-amateur-this-'n'-that-and-here's-what-I've-got-to-share! Which is great news, if the blog is deftly written, larded with expertise, and it's a subject you're interested in. Our own LP blogs are fairly new on the scene, and coincide with the explosion of fashion/beauty/etc. blogs that have been proliferated since the beginning of 2005. Unbeknownst to us (to me, at any rate), when I suggested that we publish our "articles/features" in blog format, so as to reduce individual HTML-formatting, which is tedious. Imagine my surprise, when, June 2005, I found a ton of other blogs, much along the same lines (though I've yet to find a good blog about cosmetics, the ones about perfume are many, and very good). Seems like we were but a mote of dust in a huge and rising trend. In any case, I would like to share some of the truly excellent ones I read (I think a couple are MUA-based): Laurelines: art, in the drawing and painting sense Bunnyshop: a fashion blog, not sure why it has that blank space atop, but... there are fashion blogs galore, of course, but this one has a certain (for lack of a better word) style that sort of blows my mind in a I-would-have-never-thought-of-it-myself kind of way Bois de Jasmin: Victoria's extraordinary perfume blog... read it! You'll be addicted, too! Perfume Notes: Luca Turin's blog, recommended for obvious reasons. Guise: Runway reviews in condensed, easy to view form. Asian Leprechaun: Fashion, with impeccable taste, and witty, if caustic, writing. 0 Comment(s)    Email this post Rants, raves, and musings on all things cosmetic. Profile | Current Blog Site Feed (Atom) Previous Articles ·· Bobbi Brown ·· I was in a rather pissy mood... ·· The Emperor of Scent, by Chandler Burr ·· Vernis à ongles... ·· Figures and role models, and the nature of cosmetics as an art form... ·· A thanks... ·· After a hiatus... ·· Makeup for photographs ·· The Look-alike Concept ·· A great new site... Archives TheBroadroom.Net's Beauty Blog (archive) April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 Links Colleen's Adult Acne Blog Fashiontribes Daily