Japan Blog Association founded

...hey, what the heck is that!?

Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications have announced on February 28 that they have founded "Japan Blog Association" on the same day, due to the rapid expansion. The organization will undertake its job until March 2007.

Japan Blog Association will develop and expand the activities the MIC has been working on before, and by enlightening, rewarding, studying/ researching, interacting, supporting and giving suggestions to blog-related issues, aims to speed up the growth and expansion of blogs. No executives will be set on the board for a while, and instead the Foundation for MultiMedia Communications (FMMC) will take the job.

Main activities of the organization are as follow:
enlightenment - holding of lectures and symposiums regarding blogs
rewards - rewarding outstanding (model) blogs such as those of business
research - logical analysis of awareness, market performance and future estimates
interaction - construction of a reciprocal linking site of blog-related organizations
support - offereing consultation and providing information regarding blogs to those who wish
suggestion - offering suggestions to blog service providers

You don't really need any qualifications to join the association and you can freely join as an individual entity. No fees occur in joining, just do it online.

...is what they say. Is the expansion of blogs something the nation has to act upon?
And their activities seem to be a great big ??? to me...
I mean, this entire thing sounds like a ready-made template that can be used for pretty much anything elso if you replace the word "blog" in the sentences.
Not moving or even tempting at all, huh?

Or even, what the hell do they mean by promoting the growth and expansion of blogs?
Is it like some pop on-screen talent comes up on TV commercials saying, "Let's blog!"??

I thought blogs all started from a "web log", you know, literally a personal record on the web, sth like a diary... which used to be called homepage in most cases, or am I wrong?
K, the nice part about blogs is that you can easily update on browsers and they have RSS and trackback functions making you easy to communicate with others. Well, like I have one here, I have no problems with the idea of blogs.

But it's just that I don't feel that comfortable with the idea of the nation spending money there, to promote blogs. There're a bunch of other stuff the country should be working on, I mean better stuff.

The government should do sth that the private can't do but the country can do.
But then on the other hand they try to privatize a bunch of ex-national projects like the post system.

It also makes owners of non-blog sites feel kinda isolated. It wouldn't be as bad if the project was part of a website association or whatever.

Oh well, I guess there's no good fussing about it once it started. Let's see how it all turn's out.

I just want to have this blog get going more... like boost up the counter.