資料來源：BBC News
The US elections, the insurgency in Iraq, Yasser Arafat's death, this year had its big news stories. But what else made a splash in 2004?
The noun blog - from web log - first surfaced in 1999 to describe a personal website where an author regularly posted his or her views on anything that took their fancy.
In the years since, millions of webwise writers around the world have created their own blogs where tributes to stomach surgery vie for attention with life in war-torn Baghdad. But it was in 2004 that debate about the role of the political blog and its impact on society really got under way.
To many blog triumphalists, the blog's coming of age was epitomised by the invitation of their authors to the Democrat and Republican electoral conventions over the summer.
Feasting at the same table as reporters from illustrious publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post was, they believed, concrete evidence that political elites realised the influence of the pyjama pundits. Mainstream media outlets were no longer the only ones who needed to be wooed.
And this was the face of things to come, argued prominent blogger Dan Gillmor in his book this year on the subject.
"The communication network itself will be a medium for everyone's voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing presses, launch satellites, or win the government's permission to squat on the public airways," he wrote.
Certainly, blogs have become particularly prominent in countries when there are few outlets for political expression. A frequently cited example is Iran, where the conservative authorities have clearly been rattled by the young diarists and online commentators who are filling the vacuum left behind when reformist newspapers are shut down.
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