The
Birth of Weblogs, Blogs or Blogging
The term blogging was coined by Jorn Barger in
December 1997. "Weblogs are often-updated sites that
point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with
comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of a
continual tour, with a human guide [whom] you get to
know. There are many guides to choose from, each
develops an audience, and there's also comraderie and
politics between the people who run weblogs, they point
to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs,
loops, etc." -- Dave Winer, (http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs
The shorter version, blog was coined by Peter
Merholz who in April or May of 1999 broke the word
weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his
weblog. This was interpreted as a short form of the noun
and also as a verb, to blog, meaning "to edit one's
weblog or a post to one's weblog." Usage spread during
1999 and the word was popularized by Pyra's creation of
their weblog service Blogger.
Usage spread during 1999, with the word being further
popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the
first hosted blogging tools: Evan Williams' Pyra (which
later became Blogger and was purchased by Google; and
Paul Kedrosky's GrokSoup.
As of March 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary included
the terms blogging or weblog, weblogging and weblogger
in their dictionary.
The Rise in the Influence of Blogging
In early 2002, blogging began to spring up to support
the invasion of Iraq and throughout 2003 they gained
increasing notice and coverage for their role in
breaking, shaping or spinning news stories.
The Iraq War was the first "blog war" in another way -
bloggers in Baghdad gained wider readership, and one
published a book of his blog. Reading the thoughts of
people who were "on the spot" provided a counterpoint,
if not a counterweight, to official news sources.
Blogging was often used to draw attention to obscure
news sources. Bloggers would often provide nearly
instant commentary on televised events, which became a
secondary meaning of the word "blogging".
In 2004, the role of blogging became increasingly
mainstream, as political consultants, news services and
candidates began using them as tools for outreach and
opinion formation.
Blogging however, was as much about technology as
politics, and the proliferation of tools to run blogs
and the communities around them connected blogging with
the Open Source movement.
Types of Weblogs
There are several types or uses of weblogs:
Personal
- Often, the word is used to describe an online diary or
journal. The weblog format of an online diary makes it
possible for users without much experience to create,
format, and post entries with ease. People write their
day-to-day experiences, complaints, poems, prose,
illicit thoughts and more, often allowing others to
contribute. Online diaries are integrated into the daily
lives of many teenagers and college students, with
communications between friends playing out over their
blogs.
Topical
- Another common type is topical. It focuses on a
specific niche, often a technical one. An example is a
Google Blog covering nothing but Google news.
Thoughtful
- Where a Personal weblog is primarily concerned with
daily life and events, and many topical ones focus on
some technical topic, those in the "thoughtful" category
present an individual's (or a small group's) thoughts on
whatever subject comes to hand; not necessarily the
latest computer technology or the latest political
scandal, but typically less contingent and more
philosophical subjects.
FriendBlog
- A FriendBlog is a distributed networked journal on the
web, composed of short, frequently updated posts written
by friends connected through their similar interests.
The author allows his FriendBlog to connect to other
FriendBlogs, belonging to friends and acquaintances, and
by doing so, their posts also appears in his.
Collaborative
- which is written by more than one person about a
specific topic. It can be either open to everyone or
limited to a group of people. A new form of blog
involves cooperation between bloggers and traditional
media sources.
Political
- Another common type is a political blog. Often an
individual will link to articles from news web sites and
post their own comments as well. Many of these comment
on whatever interests the author. Some of them are more
specialized. One subspecies is the watch blog which sets
out to criticize what the author considers systematic
errors or bias in an online newspaper or news site - or
perhaps even by a more popular blogger.
Directory
- Directory weblogs are useful for web-surfers because
they often collect numerous web sites with interesting
content in an easy to use and constantly updated format.
News-related weblogs can fall into this category or the
previous one.
Corporate
- Increasingly, employees of corporations are posting
official or semi-official blogs about their work.
Formats
- Some weblogs specialise in particular forms of
presentation, such as images or videos or on a
particular theme, and acronyms have been developed for
some of these, such as moblogs.
MP3 blog
- One of the types of blog that has undergone rapid
expansion since the turn of the millenium is the MP3
blog, which make audio files available to the user.
Creating and Publishing Weblogs
Since their introduction, a number of software packages
have appeared to allow individuals to create their own
weblog and Blog hosting sites and Web services to
provide editing via the Web have proliferated. Many more
advanced bloggers prefer to generate their blogs by
using server-side software tools to publish on their own
Web site or a third party site, or to host a group of
blogs for a company or school. Such programs provide
greater flexibility and power, but require more
knowledge.
In addition, some people program their own blogs from
scratch by using php, cgi, or other server side
software. While these are much more difficult to create,
they add a maximum potential for creativity.
Two features which are common to blogging are "blogrolls"
and "commenting" or "feedback".
A blogroll is a list of other blogs that are linked
separately from any article. This is one means by which
a blogger creates a context for his blog, by listing
other blogs that are similar to his/her own, or blogs
the blogger thinks may be of relevance to users.
Confusion Between Weblog and RSS
The latest weblog headlines, with hyperlinks and
summaries, are offered in a format referred to as the
RSS or Atom XML-format, which must be read with a feed
reader. This has caused some confusion regarding weblogs
and RSS and they are often, incorrectly, used
interchangeably for each other.
In summary, it is essentially a software tool or an
online service which allows you to quickly post your
thoughts, comments, reactions and to interact with other
individuals.
Whereas RSS is a method, a tool or a software protocol
that allows you and/or webmasters to quickly publish and
exchange web content data easily between and among other
websites.
Increasing Importance and Use of Weblogs and RSS to
Generate Website Traffic
A weblog’s built-in RSS feed generator makes it a
powerful tool in the hands of knowledgeable Internet
marketers – as it allows them to syndicate their website
content to other webmasters, thus increasing their
websites’ exposure as well as generating massive search
engine traffic to their website.
In a nutshell, it means that the weblog/RSS combination
provides three principal benefits to webmasters:
- A spam-free method of providing information to and
keeping in touch with subscribers, customers and
readers;
- A proven method to obtain fresh content for your
website;
- A tested and proven means of getting more traffic and
visitors from the 2 major search engines Google and
Yahoo.
Starting Your Own Blog
The fastest way to understand the concept and technology
is to try it out. Google has worked really hard to make
it really easy for you with their Free software entitled
"Blogger". Just click the URL link provided below and
you can be part of the phenomenon that's transforming
the web and media to a participatory activity in less
than five minutes. Seriously. What will happen then? Who
knows. It might be fun, though.
And remember: Blogger is totally free, and if you have
trouble, just click the Help button from any screen, and
you can find the answer you're looking for — or even
consult Blogger’s dedicated support staff all for free!
The Instant Guru Blog -
