Blogs

How do blogs work?

• Different blog programs have different features, but they all do essentially the same thing. They convert your text into an HTML web page (known as a blog post) at the click of a button. You simply type your blog post, add links or images as desired, and click a “Publish” button. The blog application will then publish your post onto the web, making it a part of your blog.

Benefits of blogs?• Blogs are easy to create:

– Due to not needing special technology and software• Blogs are easy to maintain:

– Blogs can be updated from anywhere with an internet connection– Whilst updating your blog it sorts all the information in chronological order.

• Blogs are search engine friendly– Since each blog has its own individual URL address, each of them will have

they’re own webpage.• Blogs allow you to interact with your customer base

– Blogs enable customers to leave comments– Allowing your customers will not only make them come back but will also allow

you to get to know your customers better.• Many great blogs are free!!

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest (http://www.theinternetdigest.net), an internet marketing content site packed with useful articles and resources, and SEO Tutorial (http://www.seotutorial.info) where you can learn the basics of search engine optimization in four easy steps.

Drawbacks/Limitations• “Blogs are not ice-cream. That is, there must be some motivation to

use them, some audience that the blog authors want or need to reach or to hear from” - Blog-Study

• For example, I never used a blog until I needed to at school, if it wasn’t for media studies or ICT then I would never used or looked at one

• Ongoing commitment… “Maintaining a blog is an ongoing commitment” – associatedcontent

• Blogs can be a pain to maintain, you constantly need something to post, and if you are focusing on other things, don’t bother

Fitness for purpose• A blog has many purposes depending on who uses the service…• “There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the

type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written” – Wikipedia

• Personal blogs• Corporate and organizational blogs• By genre• By media type• By device

History of blogs• Blog was originally weblog in 1997 but then was

changed in 1999 to blog• The modern blog originated from an online diary • Bloggging started out relatively small and

became very popular in 1999 • In 2004 blogs became increasingly main stream

used for political consultants, news services, and candidates

improvements

• Security issues , other people can access your blog and view the information on it

Micro-blogging websites

• Twitter is a micro blogging website this means that it is like a blog yet smaller in size Twitter is a good example of micro-blogging as you are limited to only posting 140 letters maximum .Facebook on the other hand is not a micro-blogger yet you can post status meaning its sort of blogging

Non internet forms

• News papers

• Diaries

• TV

• Radio

However blogs could therefore mean that these things may loose popularity, due to blogs becoming increasingly popular

Target audience

The main target audience for a blog can be extremely varied as it would be able to be viewed by any one able to use a computer. This means that it could be viewed by any one in the world. Blogs “are often updated multiple times a day and which by definition have tens of thousands of daily readers” (Perseus's 2003)

Bloggers have been used by many people: “By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services, and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Blogging was established by politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and other issues and cemented blogs' role as a news source “(wikipedia)

Famous bloggers are people such as Perez Hilton. “an American blogger and television personality. His blog, Perezhilton.com (formerly PageSixSixSix.com), is known for posts covering gossip items about musicians, actors and celebrities. “ (wikipedia)

https://www.blogger.com/start

Blogger is easy to set up as stated on the screenshot. This shows that basically anyone could set up a blog on whatever they would like to write about. It is a well known log site, that many people use due to how simple and easy it is to set up and use.

http://wordpress.com/

Wordpress is another website which lets you create blogs. However there is another website www.wordpress.org which allows you to download the software for wordpress to enable you to use this via another blog website.

Overall

I think that blogger is the better out of the two due to that its well known and on the website it looks more simpler than wordpress. Wordpress looks like its for more business like people.

Perseus's 2003 The Blogging Iceberg http://www.caslon.com.au/weblogprofile1.htm#audiences

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#Mainstream_popularity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perez_Hilton

http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/blog-advantages.html

Bibliography

http://blog-study.blogspot.com/2005/05/limitations-of-blogs.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/67978/the_drawbacks_of_blogging_pg2.html?cat=15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog