What do you say?

What is the whole point of a blog? Is it a diary? Is it to make witty observations on everyday life? Are you mean to put across your views on your work, hobby, obsession? How personal does it get? Do you even use your name? What if you don't have a whole heap you want to say? Or perhaps not much that you want to share?

Obviously blogs exist that run the whole gamut from highly personal to corporate bland. Witty observations are good, personal views are a must. Blogs are personal publishing I suppose. I understand keeping a diary was popular around the time of Samuel Pepys. Diaries are still not unknown but they are perhaps more associated with teenage girls these days. Are blogs a modern manifestation of a previous diary fad? Blogs however are (or at least can be) open to the public - indeed open to the world.

Each blogger decides on how personal. Does you blog contain things you'd share with some stranger you met on a train? Or stuff you might chat to mates at the pub? Or just stuff you could only feel ok about saying in an anonymous forum? I suppose if you have not a lot you want to say (or share) you just don’t have a blog.

Why do people do this?