Toby Bloomberg has taken the wraps off Blogger Stories a new blog that tells how blogging has personally changed people's lives. First up is Shel Israel, who tells how he came to the world of blogs and met some guy named Robert with help from Buzz.

Why the new blog? In Toby's words:

Welcome to Blogger Stories - a slightly different kind of blog. For me the heart of the blogosphere is two-fold. It is the people behind millions of posts created every day. It is also the people who read those posts.

Along the way of writing and reading blogs something interesting often happens. Lives are touched. Sometimes lives are changed. The influence of blogs can be major .. a new career, a support system, a friendship. Or minor .. an idea, a giggle, a recipe.

Those influences .. great and small .. make up the stories that are the soul of the blogoshere. I wanted to create a space to tell those stories. To capture how a funny named technology called "a blog" has made a difference.

Toby is on to a great thing here. The story behind the person/blog is always compelling. When we have blogger meet-ups, it's stories like this that we share. Toby has asked me to send in my story, which I will do shortly.