i found a very good article that essentially sums up what this whole "blogging" thing is all about, and why its taking off like it is. one of my favorite insights:
So why all the excitement? Everybody seems to have one and yet a weblog feels more like a pet rock than a revolution. We are particularly reminded of the excitement that accompanied the explosion of home pages in the early days of the Web. We suspect that, like home pages, the appearance of so many weblogs isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is, rather, the pervasive use of a set of technologies.