h2g2 Researchers will need little introduction to the world of personal blogs - we've had them on this site for years in the form of h2g2 Journals. Since the creation of the Internet, people have been using the medium to record their own personal experiences.

However, blogs have moved on from being merely online diaries to being places where people - or companies, or people interested in a particular subject - record their feelings on all sorts of things. Companies can get feedback from their customers and are warned that if they don't take part in online dialogues about them then it'll go on without them in any case. In the past couple of years, blogs created on sites such as Blogger and Typepad have enjoyed a new type of prominence, generating feeds that can be followed around the web, creating (in sum) something now known as the 'blogosphere.'

To begin with, blogs merely documented and offered comment on the news: however, recently they have become generators of it. The process has accelerated with the creation of so-called 'microblogging' sites such as Twitter, on which users share their feelings with a potentially very large audience in very short postings. When a US Airways Flight landed on the Hudson River in January, the first images came from eye-witnesses who posted directly to Twitter. Such services have become a key part of citizen journalism.

This week, we want to ask you:

• Do have a blog? If so, what's it about? What made you start a blog?

• Do you follow the blogs of other people? What sort of blogs interest you?

• What makes a good blog?

• Are you increasingly using the 'blogosphere' as a news resource? Could it eventually replace the traditional media entirely?

• Do you use your h2g2 journal? If so, what appeals do you about it? If not, do you think you ever would?

• Are you familiar with blog search engines such as Technorati? Do you have any tips to share about how you keep track of blog feeds and the latest news?

Or...

• Are you a traditionalist who still uses pen and paper and thinks that diaries should be personal records?