This is #5 on Chris Brogan’s 100 Blog Topics list, and is part of the 100 Topics Challenge.

Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Thirteen or fourteen years ago, I had a blog (I called it a web diary) that had about three irregular readers. All of them knew me. There weren’t really any search engines (yeah you can haggle with me on this one, but really there weren’t!), and there was no possible way anyone could have found me.

Today anyone with a big of imagination and some free time can post up a blog, cross reference their feed in a bunch of places, crow about it on Twitter, comment on a few other blogs – and within a few hours (if they have anything useful and interesting to say!), they have an audience. Not just people they know – people anywhere.

If that isn’t empowering, I don’t know what is.