Japanese entrepreneur spreads blogging gospel

From CNN

Seems more mainstream media are starting to take notice of bloggers.

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Snapshots of his pet dog, thoughts on democracy and a recipe for bamboo shoots clutter Joichi Ito's Web journal, a lively peek into the tireless mind of one of Japan's biggest Internet stars.

After developing some of the country's hottest Net ventures, the 37-year-old entrepreneur has a new mission: Making the journals known as weblogs, or blogs, not just a thriving business but also a key element of everyday life here.

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Blogs are far easier to set up than Web pages -- nearly as easy as sending e-mail -- so a whole new class of people can participate, Ito argues.

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"Weblogs are doing a lot of what people were excited about the Net when it first came out -- the fact that anyone can be a publisher," Ito said at his Tokyo office while clicking now and then on blogs.

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Blogging is such an integral part of Ito's life that he recently decided against expanding Neoteny's dozen-company portfolio to focus on Six Apart Ltd., the California company behind Movable Type and TypePad, among the leading tools for blogging.

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Ito believes blogging will one day prove as influential as the printing press.

"Blogging will fundamentally change the (way) people interact with media and politics and provide us with an opportunity to overhaul our outdated democracies," he said.

Powerful stuff.