Blogs are everywhere. They have exposed truths and spread rumors. Made and lost fortunes. Brought couples together and torn them apart. Toppled cabinet members and sparked grassroots movements. Immediate, intimate, and influential, they have put the power of personal publishing into everyone's hands. Regularly dismissed as trivial and ephemeral, they have proved that they are here to stay.

In Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg chronicles blogging's unplanned rise and improbable triumph, tracing its impact on politics, business, the media, and our personal lives. He offers close-ups of innovators such as Blogger founder Evan Williams, investigative journalist Josh Marshall, exhibitionist diarist Justin Hall, software visionary Dave Winer, mommyblogger Heather Armstrong, and many others.

These blogging pioneers were the first to face new dilemmas that have become common in the era of Google and Facebook, and their stories offer vital insights and warnings as we navigate the future. How much of our lives should we reveal on the Web? Is anonymity a boon or a curse? Which voices can we trust? What does authenticity look like on a stage where millions are fighting for attention, yet most only write for a handful? And what happens to our culture now that everyone can say everything?

Before blogs, it was easy to believe that the Web would grow up to be a clickable TV-slick, passive, mass-market. Instead, blogging brought the Web's native character into focus-convivial, expressive, democratic. Far from being pajama-clad loners, bloggers have become the curators of our collective experience, testing out their ideas in front of a crowd and linking people in ways that broadcasts can't match. Blogs have created a new kind of public sphere — one in which we can think out loud together. And now that we have begun, Rosenberg writes, it is impossible to imagine us stopping.

The author of Dreaming in Code examines the new species of written conversation — blogs — and explores the dilemmas that still face this new medium, from privacy and self-expression to authority and community.

Blogs are not a fad. They are a new species of written conversation, a complex network of influence spanning everything from political debates to torrid confessions to urgent bulletins from first responders. The days when three network anchors would tell us what to think are gone; now we get to tell one another.

Say Everything offers close-ups of blogging innovators like Blogger founder Evan Williams, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, exhibitionist diariest Justin Hall, and many others, and explores the dilemmas that still face bloggers: How much if their private lives should they reveal? Should they blog for the love or for money? Is blogging anonymous ranting or honest, unmediated discussion? Through their stories, Say Everything presents essential insights into privacy, self-expression, authority, and community for all of us in the era of Google and Facebook.

In his first book, Dreaming in Code, Scott Rosenberg brilliantly explored the art of creating software (the first true successor to Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic). In Say Everything he brings the same perceptive eye to the blogosphere, capturing as no one else has the birth of a new medium.