Dear diary...

It occurs to me as I read printouts of their blogs that b-may and Mighty Girl are engaged to be married. No, these aren't super-heroes or cartoon characters or even the latest installment from Mattel in the Barbie and Ken line. These are regular folks who utilize the Web as an online journal of sorts, a way to document the day-in, day-out routine that is their lives.

B-may's site features a snapshot of cake crumbs and fork with a caption that reads, "You should get married for the cake tasting." This is the latest entry on the blog, and it's dated Aug. 12. Mighty Girl's entry from Aug. 8 also details how the wedding plans are progressing. She writes:

Flipping through the invitation book at our local stationer,

Me: These are lovely.

Bryan: Wow. Yeah.

Me: They're not red though.

Bryan: That was my thought.

Me: But do people really remember enough about the invitation to be surprised that it doesn't match the wedding colors?

Bryan: No way. I can't imagine a single person doing that.

Me: What if they do? What if there are entire groups of people sitting around wondering why our wedding invitation doesn't match our table clothes and bridesmaid dresses?

Bryan: Come on. No one is going to notice.

Me: I think I might be one of those people who noticed.

Bryan: No, you wouldn't

Me: I might.

Bryan: Well then, I think you may be the exception to the rule.

Me: And/or the kind of person we wouldn't want to be friends with anyway.

Bryan: Ha! True. Let's get them.

Me: OK.

Mighty girl and b-may, or Maggie and Bryan as they're known to their moms and dads, are a part of a growing trend among Web users who have created and maintain their own weblogs, or blogs. But it's not just the text that keeps readers logging on for more and more in the lives of others, these virtual strangers. Bloggers post photographs of themselves, recipes, wishlists for online merchants. You name it, and you can probably find it on a blog.

For Meg Hourihan, co-author of a book on weblogs titled "We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs" who is based in New York City, blogging has been a constant in her life of travel and business since 1999.

"I've been blogging since May 1999," she writes via e-mail, "which is a long time. Since that time, it's been growing in popularity as more people are finding out about it and setting up weblogs of their own. I'd speculate that it will continue to grow."

This growth, she says, might be attributable to events such as Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq, both of which "introduced broader audiences to the concept" of blogging. "And," she said, "I think that will happen with the upcoming elections."

Hourihan, who blogs almost daily, says that the ongoing appeal of maintaining her own blog as well as reading the blogs of others fulfills some very human needs.

"Blogging is one manner in which we can use the Web to connect and converse with other people that share our interests and beliefs," she said, adding, "It realizes the ideal writable Web. Before blogging software, there wasn't a lot of regular content being created by a broad variety of people. Blogging software did two things, I think, to change that: it made it really simple for anyone to publish online, regardless of their technological knowledge; and it gave them some structure to do so (you update frequently, you link to other sites you see and you talk about them)."

"Prior to that," she added, "there was the personal homepage movement, and while that made it easy to publish, it was so open-ended and broad. Hence, we saw a lot of 'here's my cat and my children,' and then the site was never touched again. weblogs expect to be updated, and that seems to be the little distinction that made a big difference."

Finally, she said, blogging is "the natural way to format and present dynamic content online. I don't think weblogs will go away because the format makes sense for any part of a Web site that's changing."

For Brian Mitchell, a blogger from Alabama who has maintained his site for a few years, the appeal for him is the feedback he receives on the site. "Tough you can't tell from the number of comments left on the site," he said via e-mail, "I get most of my feedback on my weblog in the real world (i.e. in person)." And, like most other bloggers, he started small and progressed into a more advanced site. "I would post on my site," he said, "links that I found across the Net that I believed would be of interest to immediate family and friends. I progressed to using some software called MoveableType which is specifically written for blogging. Now, all of my entries are tagged with dates and various categories using that software."

David Gutowski, another blogger from Alabama, started his weblog, Largehearted Boy, "as an accessory to (his) Internet radio station," he said. "I needed a homepage for the radio station and decided to add a weblog as well. I've always had a fondness for music, pop culture and politics and have been known to be outspoken in my opinions. A weblog gives me the platform to share the strange and wonderful things that cross my path, as well as the occasional soapbox."

Both Mitchell and Gutowski post as frequently as possible, usually daily with a healthy dose of personal information as well photos and links to other blogs. But unlike Mitchell, Gutowski says the ongoing appeal for him is the people.

". the readers and fellow bloggers," he said, "I've made new friends all over the world because of the weblog, many of whom I've met and spent time with."

Searching the Internet, it's easy to find the blogs; they stand out as being journal-like in appearance, simple and easily navigable. In fact, you may have stumbled across one in your Web wanderings and not even known it.

But does revealing so much about oneself on the Internet bring about unwanted attention? Gutowski says that it can.

"A good friend of mine had to shut down her weblog because her family had discovered her writing, and it was causing division in the family," he said. "I'm a private person, so I don't post private details of my life on my weblog. I think weblogs appeal to the voyeur in us, that the everyday life of others is somehow more interesting, intense or exotic than our own."

Conversely, he said, "I have seen weblogging build communities, though, and strong friendships."

Hourihan echoes this sentiment. In fact, she visits other blogs as often as she updates her own. Seeing what others have to offer gives her a chance to stay in touch with friends, learn something new or join a discussion group.

"There are weblogs on specific topics," she said, "that I like to visit based on my personal interests." And that, says Hourihan, is how blogging differs from actually keeping a written journal.

"It differs in my mind in that it's intended for public consumption," she said, "Though there were online journals in the Web's early days that had similar inventions, for the most part journal-writing is an inward-looking activity: What's happening to me? How do I feel? Whereas blogging tends to be outward-looking: What's happening around me? In the news and on the Web? What are other people doing? And then engaging in that outside world through links and commentary."

Teens as well as those in their 20s and 30s see Web community as a reflection of their own ideas and interests. And getting a blog started is actually quite simple. The only equipment needed to get started is a Web browser and an Internet connection.

"There are several free services that make it really easy to get started," Hourihan said, "Blogger (www.blogger.com) is probably the easiest." Among the blogging services that charge a fee are typepad.com and livejournal.com.

Michelle Rupe Eubanks can be reached at 740-5747 or michelle.-eubanks@timesdaily.com