Quite an attendance that was over the weekend at the 2010 Blog Fest Socsksargen.  Bloggers overflowed from the ballroom of East Asia Royal Hotel.

If anything, last week’s gathering of bloggers proved that there are a growing number of people now communicating in public domains and that their influence could expand beyond the traditional medium for information and analysis in a matter of time, if they are not already there.

No longer just a repository of personal thoughts and ideas, blogsites are also increasingly becoming venues for discourse, both personal and intellectual.

Some sites are now interactive, with readers able to participate in the discussions in real time.

Not a few journalists are now linking their stories online and in blogsites where they are a member or in their own domain sites.

Conversely, bloggers have consciously and unconsciously crashed into the domain of mass media by disseminating information and opinion via the internet.  Call it citizen journalism.

The web is the fastest and cheapest, if not freest, way of information dissemination.

There are several websites that offer free blog hosting.  A URL can be have for as low as US$7 for one year and templates are available to do away with the expenses if you are not into web designing, which costs proportionally go up with the bandwidth of your site.

Even social networking sites are now able to capture stories and opinions in real time.  Some are even deliberately using these social networking sites as platforms for spreading their opinions on everything that may matter to society.

Established media, both print and broadcast, have in fact kept pace with technology revolution and evolution by creating their own websites. 

So potent is the potential breadth, appeal and influence of bloggers that ethics is now being discussed and disseminated among them.

The Blog Fest last week started the ball rolling by inviting University of the Philippines Professor Danilo Arao to speak on blogging ethics.  He correctly pointed to the blogger-participants that blogs, being part of public domain, are to be covered with the same ethical principles as any mass media.

Bloggers have their own individual and collective responsibilities to their readers because anything written and posted in their blog or web sites become part of public domain.  It is therefore incumbent upon every blogger to know what governs public domains and that they are much covered by existing laws on libel.

Now on the lighter side, please continue blogging.  After all, some are making money out of it.