5 Of The Most In­flu­en­tial Blog­gers Of Our Time

Wel­come to the Blog­gerati: Feisty and fierce blog­gers, who fil­ter in­for­ma­tion to read­ers in one pow­er­ful and suc­cinct post, ac­ti­vate trends as fast as an in­ter­net virus and some­times stir up in­ter­net controversy.

The fol­low­ing list of blog­gers have be­come­highly in­flu­en­tial as the go-to guys for the low­down on what’s hot, what’s go­ing on and what’s what.

Ar­i­anna Huff­in­g­ton of the Huff­in­g­ton Post

Set up by au­thor Ar­i­anna Huff­in­g­ton in 2005, the Huff­in­g­ton Post de­liv­ers news from all around the world and has just as much au­thor­ity as any Broad­sheet news­pa­per. In fact, in July 2012, the site was ranked first on the ‘15 Most Pop­u­lar Po­lit­i­cal Sites’ by eBizMBA Rank.

The blog pro­vides up-to-the-minute cov­er­age on cat­e­gories rang­ing from pol­i­tics and lifestyle to celebrity cul­ture and merges fea­ture ar­ti­cles with colum­nist posts.

Some celebri­ties such as Robert Re­ich even have their own blogs on the Huff­in­g­ton Post. The Huff­in­g­ton Post has an ac­tive and ever-grow­ing com­mu­nity of read­ers sur­pass­ing one mil­lion com­ments on the blog each month. It is the go-to news outlet.

Perez Hilton of Perez Hilton

Play­ing on the name of pos­si­bly the most in­fa­mous heiresses of our time, Perez Hilton is a blog­ging pseu­do­nym syn­ony­mous with law suits and con­tro­versy. Ever hot on the heels of the hottest celebri­ties in Hol­ly­wood, Hilton con­tro­ver­sially names and shames celebri­ties in tabloid-style posts, videos and im­ages thereby ac­quir­ing quite a few A-list enemies.

How­ever, Hilton also praises the suc­cess of stars par­tic­u­larly that of Paris Hilton who he is said to have a close bond with. At the time of set­ting up his blog, the in­ter­net was flooded with on­line jour­nals and di­aries. It was his pas­sion for celebrity cul­ture that stim­u­lated a unique blog: “I wanted to talk about celebri­ties be­cause they’re far more entertaining.”

Let’s face it: Hilton is a star in his own right as he min­gles with celebri­ties on the red car­pet. Not bad for a tabloid blogger.

Michael Ar­ring­ton of TechCrunch

Set up in 2005 by Michael Ar­ring­ton, TechCrunch is the hottest news re­porter for any­thing tech­ni­cal, pro­vid­ing in-depth re­views and ex­plo­rative re­ports on any­thing from start ups to gad­gets. Hot top­ics un­doubt­edly in­clude the big boys in the tech­nol­ogy world: Face­book and Apple.

The site lets read­ers know what’s go­ing on in the in­ter­net world and the coolest gad­gets and sites to keep their eye on. It has many side projects such as Crunch­Base which is a Wiki-style site for read­ers to edit and con­tribute to.

Poppy Din­sey of What I Wore Today

It was a New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion from De­cem­ber 2009 that sparked off a chal­lenge to wear a dif­fer­ent out­fit every day. Orig­i­nally from Sur­rey, Lon­­don-based blog­ger Poppy Din­sey posted a pic­ture of her­self every day, rock­ing quirky out­fits to show off her pas­sion for fashion.

Din­sey recorded her out­fits on her blog and in no time, Din­sey ac­quired a host of ad­mir­ing fash­ion fol­low­ers, at­tract­ing thou­sands of vis­i­tors a month to her blog. What I Wore To­day is now a so­cial net­work for users to post their own outfits.

What started off as a hum­ble photo blog has evolved into a fierce fash­ion net­work where users can share their own cloth­ing choices.

Jon Able­son of AlterThePress.com

AlterThePress.com pro­vides the lat­est news and re­views on both al­ter­na­tive and pop mu­sic with in­ter­views and videos. Opened in 2008 by Jon Able­son, the blog is revered as one of the most re­li­able mu­sic pub­li­ca­tions on­line and cel­e­brates bands both big and small.

 

So, those were (in my opin­ion) the top 5 most in­flu­en­tial blog­gers of all time. For many blog­gers, what started off as a hobby has be­come a full-time job. If you’d like to try your hand at blog­ging, join a writ­ing com­mu­nity.

What great blogs have you read recently?