Blog, short for Weblog, is a Web site that contains brief entries arranged in reverse chronological order. Blogs are diverse, ranging from personal diaries to news sites that monitor developments on anything from Outer Mongolia to copyright law. Evan Williams, the creator of Blogger, describes them this way: "the blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity and Personality."
Need to Know Lingo and Terminology
In order to get a feel for the world of blogging, it helps to get a handle on the lingo. "Blogging" is the act of creating a blog. A "blogger" is a person who maintains a blog. Bloggers create entries, which they "post" or publish to their blog. "Bloggrolling" is the act of moving from one blog to another.
A blog can be created by just one author or done collaboratively by a community of authors. Blogs can be updated from several times per day to just a few times per week or month. Some blogs encourage interactivity between the writer and audience by allowing readers to post comments and questions about entries.
Today, blogs range from the simple "what's new" type of listing to sophisticated Web sites with dozens of bells and whistles—site search capabilities; topical categories; daily, weekly, and monthly archives; built-in mailing list management functions; and RSS headline syndication. The blog content ranges from the interesting and insightful to the mundane and useless.
Why Have These Weblogs Been Spreading Like Wildfire?
Blogs have exploded on the Web because they have made it much easier to publish content online. Creating Web pages with HTML editors was a barrier for many people who were short on time to acquire new skills and to troubleshoot browser issues. Blogging software makes it as easy to publish content online as it is to write a note to post on your fridge. It's really that easy! You don't have to know anything about HTML or how to link from one page to another, let alone upload files with FTP programs to a Web server. Signing up for a blog account is easy, too—in less than 3 minutes, you can have a blog and area to publish your first entry.
Many teachers and students started off excitedly creating their first Web sites, only to become disillusioned because of the effort it took to update and maintain content with an often-cumbersome, multi-step process. Blogging software can eliminate most of this drudgery. The power of the blog lies not only in the ease of publishing new content, but also in its ability to automatically archive old posts and refresh the content of the main page.
One very significant factor in the growth of blogs is the blogging community. The ease with which you can link to other sites and blog entries has spawned a frenzy of linking from blog to blog. Almost everyone likes to know that his or her work is read and recognized by others. Bloggers can receive almost-instant feedback as visitors and other bloggers comment on posts and explore mutual ideas.
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