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Millions of people use blogs to share their thoughts with the world. While this means an unprecedented level of free speech, there are two sides to the blogging coin.

People have been recording daily experiences and opinions for thousands of years. What is new is the potential to have a global network of readers.

It's easy. Register on a free blogging tool on the web. Set up your blog and write away to your heart's content.

Many blogs never interest anyone except their authors.

Others attract massive audiences with genuinely interesting content, such as battlefield reports by United States soldiers in Iraq.

Some have high profile publishers, like corporations and marketers who use them to create dialogs with their markets and constituencies.

Blogs are probably the ultimate free press. The flipside is that as quantity increases, quality can decrease.

Bloggers publish without the editorial control under which journalists work. They can churn out self-indulgent ramblings that add no value to anything.

Professional writers cringe when they see the web becoming a showcase for amateur work.

Is this really a problem? On balance, no.

The ability to communicate freely is important. Let bloggers write what they like. We are all free to choose what we want to read and believe.