Obtaining and maintaining a blog has become relatively easy since the advent of the genre over a decade ago. For this reason, the number of active blogs and bloggers is difficult to calculate. It is nearly impossible to find a specific blog on any given topic by sifting through the millions of blogs online. Since there is an element of anonymity to writing in the blogosphere (users are not required to use their real name or even include a picture), bloggers are sometimes viewed as untrustworthy and as a corruption of journalistic integrity. A delicate balance exists between traditional and blog-style journalism as they denounce one another as a trivial medium.

What distinguishes blogging from other forms of public writing is that there is no code of ethics that binds the blogosphere together. Although some bloggers practice professional writing, the vast majority of blog writers are amateurs. Blogs encourage individuality and diversity of writing styles in ways that the mainstream media cannot -- not to mention that the politics, forms of spin, and biases occasionally created by the mainstream media become null and void in the blogging community.