There is a vast movement underway on the Internet these days, and it is growing in popularity and sheer volume everyday – blogs and blogging. If you are interested in learning more about blogging software and how blogs work then the following information will help.
Blog is a portmanteau word – which is a shortened form of two separate words mashed together. In this case it is the melding of "web log" into a simpler form – "blog". The term blog refers to a less formal means of communication on the Internet that often takes the form of multiple smaller entries combined together to form a wholistic and coherent website. Most blogs are displayed in reverse chronoligical order – that is the newest or latest entries are displayed first and the older entries are displayed after. Another often utilized aspect of blogs is that they solicit comments form the readers and offer the opportunity to link together blog entries of related information.
Some blogs are personal – as in a diary of activities or insights of an individual. These can range from the mundane to the profound – as there are as many types of blogs as there are writers to pen them. Other blogs are focussed on business persuits, or keeping readers abreast of the latest developments in a particular industry or vocation. It has become popular for traditional websites to incorporate blogs as a component of their information distribution to add fresh content when events dictate.
The following are some examples of blogs that cover both personal and business topics to give real world examples of currently updated sites:
Danny Sullivan, the search engine guru and visionary of the search engine landscape, has a blog that covers both personal and professional topics at Daggle.com.
There is a very insightful blog which has a business focus on great customer service, written by the CEO of Hostmysite.com, called Customer Service Defined.
An entertaining and informative blog entitled, Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO also combines personal observations with an excellent overview of Google’s policies and practices – particularly regarding search rankings.
It is easy to discover new blogs such as those listed above by using a couple of blogging resources. Google has an excellent blog search function located at:http://blogsearch.google.com/. Simply type in the category of interest into the search box and thousands of blogs relating to that topic are listed. Another great feature of the Google Blog Search (beta, of course!) is the ability to view content by how ”fresh” it is. That is – you can view material created within the past hour, the last 12 hours, the last day, or the past week. This function is labeled ”Published” and is found on the left navigation bar.
Another popular engine used to navigate blog content is Technorati. It has a great search feature, but also uses a ”cloud” view to represent popular categories. This feature is labeled, ”Top Tags”, as the Technorati operational methodology is to permit users to label their content with specific ”tags” to categorize content. There are also some navigation tabs in the center of the Technorati home page which segregate content by popularity and category. The current ”popular” categories are: Videos, Music, Movies, Games, DVDs, News, and a category entitled Buzz. They also have a great quote on the Technorati home page by Matt, ”71 million blogs…some of them have to be good”.
Tim O’Reilly has also recently published a Call for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct which has some helpful information and insights. One should also consider affordable web hosting options with regard to hosting a blog.
In closing, here are a few of the more commonly used terms relating to blogs and blogging:
Blog – or web log, as mentioned above is a less formal means of communication on the Internet that often takes the form of multiple smaller entries combined together to form a holistic and coherent website.
Blogger – the individual who creates or writes the blog. Also an online software service owned by Google which enables easy blogging. See it at blogger.com.
Blogging – the act of systematically writing a series of shorter pieces over a period of time to create a blog.
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