What Is a Blog?
These days you hear about blogs all the time. It seems like everyone has a blog from your friend’s 9-year-old son to the crazy hat lady you always see covered in thread and bits of felt at the grocery store. You may have a vague notion of what a blog is. You may even read a few, but you still can’t quite nail down a good definition.
When you go to most websites, you get a home page that rarely changes. Every time you go to it, it looks the same, has the same links, the same navigation system. From this home page, you can go to any number of other informational pages that also stay pretty much the same because a company’s information generally doesn’t change much.
A blog is a kind of website whose content changes regularly. Blogs are usually maintained by individuals, but there are many companies that now have blogs to share news and announcements.
Essentially, a blog is an ongoing list of updates. The most recent updates (or posts) are at the top of the page, and older posts are at the bottom. Every time the author of the blog (blogger) publishes a new post on his blog, it appears at the top of the page, and all the older posts are pushed down a space.
People use blogs for many things, from keeping family and friends up-to-date on Junior’s first Christmas to showcasing the worst professionally-made cakes found in bakeries the world over. They can be personal or professional, for fun or for profit, updated regularly or next to never.
Origin of the Word "Blog"
The word “blog” is a contraction of the words “web” and “log” -- not like a wooden log, but like “Captain’s Log, Stardate 43657.0,” as in a record or a diary. In the late ‘90s, a man named Jorn Barger coined the term “weblog,” and a couple of years after that, Peter Merholz shortened it to just “blog.” It didn’t take long after that for speakers of the English language to turn it into a verb - “to blog” - and then for people who blog to be dubbed “bloggers.”
Number of Blogs Available
Anyone can be a blogger. With the advent of blog software/web hosting combos like blogger.com, wordpress.com and livejournal.com, you don’t even have to be a computer whiz to get started. If you can send an e-mail, you can publish a blog post, and voila, you’re online.
Because it’s so easy, it seems like everyone has a blog these days. Indeed, although it’s impossible to get an exact count of the number of blogs out there, 180 million would be a conservative estimate (according to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report).
Reasons to Have a Blog
People have blogs for a million different reasons. Most personal or hobby bloggers say their motivation is self-expression and the sharing of expertise. This is evident in all types of blogs from marketing blogs to mommy blogs.
But for small businesses or large corporations, blogs can also be an excellent means of communication. By setting up a blog, a company can share news and make announcements regarding everything from new product ideas to company picnics. And by allowing readers to comment on blog posts, companies can get fast feedback from their customers.
Setting Up a Blog
Setting up a blog is easy nowadays. Websites like blogger.com and wordpress.com will walk you through each step of setting up your site, from choosing the name and URL of your blog to approving your first comments. You can personalize it as little or as much as you want. You can even give it a night sky background and call it “Captain’s Log.”
With a blog you can record your thoughts, feelings and observations about the world around you. It is a mass communication tool. It is a place where you can express yourself. It puts getting published in your hands. In short, a blog is whatever you make it. It’s your web log, after all, Captain.