What is a Blog?

Blog – otherwise known as a “web log”

A website maintained by an individual or group of people with regular entries of commentary or media.

Usually contain news on a certain subject or function as an online diary

Most are based on text but some focus on things like art, photos, sketches, videos, and music.

Term “weblog” coined by Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997

Before blogs were created, internet forum software was created in the 90’s such as WebEx which created running conversations with “threads”

Modern blog evolved from the online diary One of earliers bloggers was Justin Hall in 1994 at

Swarthmore College who recorded his day to day activities in a personal blog

Early blogs were just websites that were continually manually updated but new software made publishing of blogs more feasible

Personal blogs Corporate blogs Question blogging Media blogs Blogs by genre

Most common type of blog Diary or commentary by an individual A way to not only to communicate,

but reflect on life

http://yanzhilton.wordpress.com/

Some blogs are private while others are for business purposes

Internally- enhance communication within the corporation

Externally- marketing, branding or PR

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Known as Qlogs A type of blog that answers questions

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/story?columnist=buccigross_john&id=3758465

A blog sometimes by a media outlet Can give the reader another

prospective on the news Criticism of the news

http://media.nationalreview.com/

Blogs have given anyone on the internet an opportunity to voice their opinions; which is a big part of web 2.0. The use of blogs varies and is growing in popularity.