The blog If:book is an online page with many writers and many topics. From short posts on strange punctuation marks in France to predictions of the future of Times, this blog is free to many opinions and comments. The layout of If:book is simple; On the pages, writings posted by the members are placed on the main page of the blog. Running on the right of those posts are links to other blog users, recent comments and previous posts. As far as form, this site has it laid out almost too simple. You cannot find any eye-catching glamour in this site nor any ads that you might be interested in. As far as appeal, this blog has it horrible. In this rushed society, such a website of words usually only has one shot to grab the audiences’ attention. If they miss it, they usually don’t have another chance. Yet, although this blog does not have any flashy appeal, the website worked. This blog was one of the top blogs for 2006; what makes one wonder is HOW they did it. What made this blog one of the top blogs, I think, is the content of the blog. To the simple eye, the things discussed are somewhat dull. In my opinion, it is boring. The latest posts talk about network labor and copyright issues online to problems with a new service in Yahoo!. This does not concern myself, nor does it affect the way I live life. And speaking for the common public, we can care less to what happens to a multi-billion dollar business (unless you work for Yahoo! I guess…). Looking deeply into the writing however, I realized this blog had a great medium to the news of society. Often when you go into a news media, such as TIME or Yahoo! News, we are able to find the spotlight incidents. Yet, because it’s from NEWS, they are obligated to deliver the unbiased, ‘as is’ news. Sometimes, it is good to hear a voice that expresses an opinion. The writers and bloggers of IF:book does that. They have simple posts of news from different news sources. From that, they talk and debate on the material of that news. Also, on this blog, many writers freely post their opinions that talks from the simple American man’s point of view. News often escalates the material that they talk of on a national level, or a huge corporate level. For example, the incident with Enron and the insider trading. Sure, the cameras focused on the CEOs and FEOs, and what they did as horrible crimes. But, few pictures were taken of the typical family that was devastated by this incident. Sometimes, we need to see news on a smaller scale; If:book allows users to do so. Some posts don’t make sense, and some posts just seem pointless. But, as always, it’s good to find a place to communicate of news on a simple sense. Whether you want to gripe and complain, or just simply see what others have to say.

The concept of the site is a bit too big for me to incorporate into. However, the content reaches out to me. What I want to post on my blog is not of something that I'm mandated to do, such as an English assignment. Whatever I write about, the writing goal I am aiming for is writing that speaks out to the reader as just another person with something to say.