The Use of Blogs as an Example of Internet Entrepreneurship: Turkish Travel Blogs

Abstract

Blogs have become a phenomenal reality of everyday life since the early 1990s. Blogging practice, which began primarily as a spare time activity then, has now come to be a profession for many. The most outstanding example of this could be observed through the use of travel blogs. Indeed, today travel blogs are significant employment areas within the tourism sector. In terms of cost and saving on time in particular, and richness in information as well as easy access to information, Internet technologies such as blogs have become notable communication and marketing platforms both for tourism supply and for demand. In the process of purchase decision of touristic product having abstract characteristic features, people feel a need for more intense information. Accordingly, with the shift of touristic consumers into one who not only consumes but also produces by interactive feature of Web 2.0, travel blogs can be considered as one of the epitomes of technology entrepreneurship. In this respect, this study approaches travel blogs as an example of Internet entrepreneurship. And in this context it is examined how bloggers use this medium as a new employment area it is examined in this context. A sum of 10 travel blogs has been examined through discourse analysis.