Every day you hear about how companies are integrating blogs or how this tech person has started a new blog. But, it’s when you hear the success stores of those that you’d never thoguht about that you really realize, anyone can blog; professionally.

Yesterday at the 2006 Mima Summit, Michelle Collins of VH1 gave the afternoon keynote presentation and it was hilarious. Michelle now works for VH1’s Best Week Ever and blogs for a living. She covers the important stuff like how Full House really screwed up their actors and all the Hollywood hook-up/break-up news. Sounds like a rough job doesn’t it? However, it wasn’t all success for Michelle Collins.

She graduated collage with an Art History degree and moved to New York to do….. well…. anything. She didn’t quite like the professional scene yet her comedy wasn’t getting her very far either. So she started her You Can’t Make It Up blog where she wrote about whatever is on her mind. Turns out, she started getting noticed. Her posting of a cat going to the bathroom on a toilet got mentioned at the Emmys this year and her post about how New York City smelled like maple syrup got her a call from the Daily Show and in NY Newsday! Eventually when VH1 was looking for a new blogger. She fit the bill perfectly and is now blogging professionally.

Listening to the news last night, Fox9 here in the Twin Cities was talking about their new website, myfox9.com, and the offerings of a free blog to everyone. Not being one to pass up an opportunity to check out new blogging software, I signed up and made my first post. To say the least, it’s lacking so far.

Missing are quite a few key features. Title tags, customizable categories, PINGing and auto detect RSS feeds are just a few of the bigger missing features. Granted, this may be under heavy construction as quite a few parts of the new site is.

The biggest downside to the FOX blogs is that everything must be approved. Upload an image, it must get approved. Change your blog name, write a post, even signing up must be approved. Approval takes up to 24 hours but I think I was approved in minutes. This works fine for now, but what about when you get a couple hundred users? The lag time between posting and it going live, could be to much for some users.