BANGALORE, INDIA: On January 15, 2009, the North Carolina bound US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River near Manhattan six minutes after taking off from LaGuardia Airport, New York.

Just minutes after, a small post appeared on a hugely popular microblogging site, which said, 'There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people.'

The post (http://twitpic.com/135xa) had with it a big picture of the plane floating on the river. This was followed by a tremendous traffic to the site, which had millions of members reading the post and commenting on the picture.

One of the comments posted said, 'iPhone & Twitter: Good night and good luck to old media'. Many media reports covering this incident had referred to this post as a first source.

This clearly defines the scope the concept of blog, including microblogging, has acquired over a decade's time and the influence it is now able to exert in the opinion making of the authorities.

The blogosphere is now celebrating the 10th birthday of the word blog, though the concept is much older.

The term 'weblog' was coined by an American blogger Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997, while its short form, 'blog,' was coined by Peter Merholz, who displayed the word weblog into the phrase 'we blog' (pronounced as weeblog) in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April/May 1999. Shortly after, the word 'blog' was started being used as both a noun and verb. Incidentally, making a verb out of a noun is a method successfully implemented by many ad guru.

In India, though the exact number of active bloggers are not known, JuxtConsult’s India Online 2008 report estimated the number of Indian bloggers to be at 3.2 million.

Meanwhile, globally, an over 130 million people who literally live on digital world are a near-reliable source to the mainstream media.

From Obama to Amitabh Bachchan to the lesser known citizens, everybody is after blog to express themselves (at times without any discrimination and fear of censorship) and break news. And our own Priyanka Chopra has over 30,000 followers in Twitter, mind it!

From reflections and musings to intimate family secrets find expression here. Just now it was read that Bollywood actor Aamir Khan broke the news of his wife Kiran Rao suffering a miscarriage, of course through his blog only.

While for some people it is a mode to reach out to the people, for others, it is the weapon. And then there are the kind of bloggers who shocked us with their blog postings. Remember the Compulsive Confessor Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, who revolutionized the Indian blogosphere with her postings, which later became the raw material for a book?

Hers is not an isolated case, however. There are many young bloods who are dare enough to express more and more (and some of them wash dirty linen in public though!).

Still the political dimension of blogs cannot be overlooked. When many autocratic governments revived 'the jagging act' to muzzle the media which stood for freedom of expression, it was blogs which took up the cudgels for democracy, leveraging the concept of 'citizen journalism' in a more effective sense.

But the recent past had seen countries like China, Iran and Malaysia resorting to a clampdowns on bloggers also. And the iron wall is spread to other countries as well. In Iran many protesters had logged into the social networking media and the blogosphere to express themselves against the rulers.

The recent cyber attack on Twitter was actually targeted at a Georgian blogger, it was reported. The blogger said the attack was the act of Russian hackers.

India also witnessed somewhat similar incidents. Television channel NDTV had allegedly sued an Indian blogger from Netherlands named Chyetanya Kunte over his blog about the news coverage of terrorist attack on Mumbai last year, which contained a reference from Wikipedia to journalist Barkha Dutt. NDTV had reportedly threatened to sue the blogger and asked for an apology, which the blogger promptly did.

Another such incident saw Google India being sued by Mumbai based Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects for hosting a series of articles on its blogging site, which has been campaigning against the company's mines in Mozambique. However, Google promptly said it has no control over blogs.

Actually the strength of blogging was clearly visible during the Mumbai terror attack. It had really beaten the mainstream media in breaking the news in seconds.

And then, there was this 'Fake IPL Player' who amused and shocked the Indian cricket fans when he 'exposed' the inner drama of the Kolkata Knight Riders, owned by actor Shah Rukh Khan. But nowadays nothing is heard of him. No more dirty linen in the dressing room, maybe!

As any other medium, blogs also are experiencing the the pains and ecstasies of fighting for freedom of speech and expression. So, do you think that blogosphere is gaining as much influence in the society as the mainstream media, characterized by a perfect blend of news, opinions, libelous comments and litigations? Will it really give the old media a run for its money?