Weblog (original) (raw)

simple:blog

A weblog (often web log, also known as a blog, see below) is a websitewhich contains periodic, chronologically ordered posts in a common webspace. The individual posts (which taken together are the weblog) either share a particular theme, or a single or small group of authors.

The totality of web logs and blog-related webs is usually called the blogosphere. The format of web logs varies, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to article summaries with user-provided comments and ratings. Individual web log entries are almost always date and time-stamped, and tend to be presented in reverse chronological order, with the newest post at the top of the page. Because links are so important to web blogs, most web blogs have a way of archiving older entries and generating a static address for individual entries; this static link is often referred to as a permalink.

History

Amateur radio is, in many ways, the predecessor of the modern internet. Ham radio logs formed a sort-of precursor to the modern web log. With miniaturization, ham radio equipment evolved from fixed (located in homes and offices) to mobile (automotive, in cars, vans, and boats) to portable (handheld, wearable, and even implantable) [1]. Portable ham radio gear made possible the CyborgLog (cyborglog, or "glog" for short) in which early cyborg communities were possible. Glogs also gave rise to early electronic newsgathering on the Web.

Weblogs have some similarities with wikis, in that they may stimulate community interaction, and some allow reader feedback. Web logs do not generally permit readers to modify existing text, though some exist that do (see, blikis, chat rooms).

The term "weblog" 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 who 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, [1]

The shorter version, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz who in April or May of 1999 broke the word weblog into the phrase "wee' blog" in the sidebar of his weblog [1]. This was interpreted as a short form of the noun [1] 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. The Oxford English Dictionary has considered including it in their dictionary (see the editorial).

Creating and Publishing Weblogs

Since their introduction, a number of software packages have appeared to allow people to create their own web log. Blog hosting sites and Web services to provide editing via the Web have proliferated. Common examples include pitas, blogger, and xanga.

Many more advanced bloggers prefer to generate their blogs by using software tools such as Movable Type, and then to publish their articles on their own Web site, or on a third party site. This provides some greater flexibility and power, but requires more knowledge. Additionally, it may reduce the ease of creating and editing text for travellers, some of whom like to produce their travelblogs from Internet cafes as they travel around the globe.

Many blogging tools have also been developed to improve the blogging experience, with commonly used ones providing blogrolls and feedback comment systems. Well known examples of these are blogrolling and the commenting system HaloScan. Tools such as w.bloggar allow users to maintain their Web hosted blog without the need to use the (generally somewhat slower) Web based editing tools. Fundamental enhancements to weblog technology continue to be developed. The most intriguing one, generating growing interest in 2003, is Movable Type's trackback feature which enables automatic notification between websites of related content such as a post on a particular topic or which responds to a post on another weblog [1].

Features such as Trackback are credited with the destruction of Google's PageRank feature [1] and confusing (perhaps deliberately gaming) search engines that try and establish context.

Many web hosting companies also provide blog creation tools. For example, Tripod (www.tripod.com) offers this service.

Types of Weblogs

Personal

Often, the word blog is used to describe an online diary or journal, such as LiveJournal. 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, fulfilling to a certain extent Tim Berners-Lee's original view of the World Wide Web as a collaborative medium. In 2001, mainstream awareness of online diaries began to increase dramatically.

Online diaries are integrated into the daily lives of many teenagers and college students, with communications between friends playing out over their blogs. Even fights may be posted in the diaries, with not-so-veiled insults of each other easily readable by all their friends, enemies, and complete strangers. Online diaries may also be a bane to job seekers, if their diaries are discovered by potential employers.

Political

Another common kind of blog 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 blogs comment on whatever interests the author. Some of them are more specialized. One subspecies is the watch blog, a 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. One of the earliest and most popular examples of this genre of blog is www.AndrewSullivan.com, the personal blog of Anglo-American journalist and writer Andrew Sullivan which claims (as of late 2002, early 2003) over 250,000 unique visitors per month.

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 (such as Slashdot) can fall into this category or the previous one (political blogs).

Formats

Some web logs specialise in particular forms of presentation, such as images (see web comics), or videos, or on a particular theme, and acronyms have been developed for some of these, such as moblogs (for "mobile" blog).

Example Weblogs

(see also Friends of Wikipedia/Personal weblogs)

Blog directories

Blogging systems

Websites that analyze weblogs

Further References