A few weeks ago, Lily Allen started a blog that showed her support against illegal file-sharing. The blog, called It’s Not Alright, was a direct response to the Featured Artists Coalition, a group that supports file-sharing. This group includes Radiohead and Blur.

Allen’s blog is supported by Mark Ronson and Gary Barlow, among others. But the heat that she has been getting from fans, who accuse her that she is against file-sharing because it will affect her financially.

Allen said the abuse she has been getting from fans prompted her to stop the blog. She added that she is “proud of the fact that I’ve been involved with this debate but I’m passing the baton on to other artists.”

There’s more and more reasons to blog — and one of them is a growing number of people devoting most of their online time reading blogs and visiting social networks.

Based on a study conducted by Nielsen, Americans are using 17 percent of their time visiting blogging sites like Blogger and social network sites like Facebook. This was a significant rise from the six percent that was calculated last year.

The Nielsen study also showed that spending for ads on blogging sites and social networks has doubled from last year, with spending amounting to $108 million a month. What’s more significant is that the increase was posted even when ad spend on other industries have decreased.

Blogging has really arrived in the mainstream.

IBM recently announced that it is including a micro-blogging feature to its Lotus Connections array of social networking tools. The company’s decision to include this feature, along with a file sharing capability, is to expand the reach of its software suite.

Lotus Connections 2.5 will also add a wiki service, which really repurposes its target market towards the tech-savvy person who wants to further enhance his blogging efforts.

This is a really good idea from IBM. It differentiates its product from Microsoft’s similar products while also addressing the growing demand for easy blogging features.

In these tough economic times no one can be assured of job security so it is quite refreshing and inspiring to hear about little triumphs that happen despite these trying times.

Brianna Karp’s story is one of those success stories that encourage people to persevere and give the blogging community a positive boost.

The 24-year-old Karp was laid off from her executive assistant work in July 2008. She made do with temp jobs and getting unemployment benefits but when she went through her personal savings she was forced to let go of her apartment and basically became homeless. The one thing she had to her name was a trailer she inherited from her father who committed suicide. Karp found herself living in the trailer that was parked in an LA-area Walmart parking lot.

Armed with her laptop, Karp banged out resumes and continued to look for a new job and because of the free WiFi at a coffee shop, started blogging. Her blog, the Girl’s Guide to Homelessness, was her personal account of adjusting to her new life.

Her voice was heard. People started reading her blog and her often hilarious takes on what it is to be homeless and the issues that surround her situation. Matt Barnes, a formerly homeless man who runs a web site on homeless issues in Scotland, even contacted her and asked her to write for his site. The two eventually became involved.

Karp’s great writing skills even endeared her to Elle Magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. Karp unsuccessfully tried to audition for a reality show where contestants vie for a position as an assistant to Carroll. After the failed audition, Karp emailed Carroll personally and the message grabbed the columnist’s attention. Carroll offered Karp an internship and a chance to write a fashion blog for the magazine.

Perseverance and a real opportunity to use blogging for something fresh was Karp’s ticket to success.

Twitter may be the hottest thing on the internet right now but even with its popularity the microblogging platform that has become the platform of choice for many celebrities and artists has yet to make money.

The people behind Twitter are now trying to make the venture profitable by changing its terms to potentially open itself up to advertisers.

In the Twitter blog, Biz Stone the co-founder of Twitter, said that they are trying to “keep our options” open.

There were no exact details given about how to open Twitter to advertisers. But the company has been studying different ways to generate revenue from the service that has seen phenomenal growth since it went public in 2006. Some of the other ways being thought of is to charge for commercial accounts.

Also recently, Twitter started giving out authenticity badges as a sign that the person who owns the account is who they say they are. This has been seen as something that corporate entities may be interested in buying.