What is a blog?

The term “blog” is short for weblog. A weblog is a form of Internet diary or journal that is publicly viewable. Anyone who writes a blog is known as a “blogger” whilst the activity of updating a blog is known as “blogging”.

The term “weblog” was originally coined by John Barger in 1997 in the early days of blogging.

How popular are blogs?

People are known to have been blogging (although not under the term “blog”) since the mid 1990s although it is not until more recently that blogs have become as popular as they are today.

In was in 1999 that hosted blogging tools first began to appear, such as Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan’s Blogger (which Google purchased in February 2003). In 2003 the terms weblog, weblogging and weblogger appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Since 2003 the popularity of blogs have increased dramatically. In January 2006, blog search engine Technorati was tracking 25.3 million blogs.

What do you blog about?

Bloggers can typically blog about anything. Most bloggers blog about what is going on in their personal lives, although some will blog on a specific topic, such as Technology or Politics.

Anybody can start a blog about anything, and with the tools built into today’s popular blogging software it is easy for your blog to be found, picked up and read by visitors.

Those who choose to blog on a particular blog may see their blog being the source of news in that area.

Some bloggers will also have multiple blogs on multiple topics or blog as part of a blog network, such as 9rules.

What is a blog network?

A blog network is simply a collection of blogs/bloggers writing as part of a network alongside other bloggers.

Blogging as part of a network can help greatly to give your site some extra exposure and get noticed on the web. Members of a network are also likely to share tips and strategies, give each other advice and help to improve each others blogs.

Is there money in blogging?

In short: yes there is. Some bloggers, such as Darren Rowse, are “Pro Bloggers” – they blog for a living.

Some people are paid by companies to blog for them, although most will make money on their blogs through advertising.

Many will notice that Google AdSense is a popular contextual advertising service that is used on many blogs.

Blogging Software

Nowadays it is relatively easy to set up a blog and get blogging thanks to the array of scripts and programs available for you to use. Some of these are free, some are not.

What you use will depend on how you want to control your blog. There are various services available that will host your blog for free, such as Blogger and WordPress.com (a service provided by the creators of WordPress) and there are also a number of scripts that you can download and install on your own server/hosting and manage yourself.

Currently one of the most popular blogging scripts is WordPress. WordPress is open source and freely available, as well as easy to install and use.

Other solutions include boastMachine and Moveable Type.

Moblogging

Moblogging refers to “mobile blogging” – blogging whilst on the move or away from your computer.

Moblogging has been made popular by now widely available camera phones and/or mobile phones with built in Internet access allowing users to blog on the move.

A popular activity of moblogging is to take photos on your phone and post them straight to your blog.

Blogging in the Future

It is impossible to say where blogging will take us in the future, although it is fair to say from it’s popularity now that blogs will be widely used and popular for many years to come.

Tags

blogging, blogs

Bookmark on del.icio.us