Why has blogging attracted so much attention?

If answer doesn't come easily you can look for in the last edition of "The corporate blogging book" by Debbie Weil. The phenomenom is built around 3 things:

Scale: When Technorati arrived in 2002 it counted just under 13.000 blogs. In early 2005 a Gallup poll had found that 7% of USA Internet users said they were 'very familiar' with blogs although 62 percent didn't know what blogs were.In 2009 Blog Pulse tracked 126 million blogs on the Internet.

Speed: Telling a story as you see and share it instantly, Blogs are instant and 24/7.You own it, manage it and control it.

Impact:Blogging's Impact on Politics is more than evident.

I would add a fourth: The increased ability of consumers to create and publish their own content suddenly come under the spotlight.