Blogging-what is it about?

advantages, disadvantages and useful examples

What is a blog? A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a persons life what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people. A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. Blog is an abbreviated version of weblog which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles or other Web sites. A blog is an Internet online journal that offers running commentary or posts in reverse chronological order. The word is a construction of Web log. The word weblog in turn, was probably* first coined by Jorn Barger in December of 1997. The word blog was probably coined by Peter Merholz in 1999 and was the word of the year in 2004, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary publisher. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news, some functions as more personal online diaries. A tipical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primary textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media. Blogger.com says: A blog is a personal diary. A diary pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. *Matisse Enzer's Glossary of Internet Terms Blog (weblog) A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is blogging and someone who keeps a blog is a blogger. Blogs are tipically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently. *Wikipedia -A weblog web log or simply a blog is a web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common web page. Weblog is a portmanteau of web and log. The term blog came into common use as a way of avoiding confusions with the term server log. What is blogging? Blogging is growing and for very good reasons, much like email took off ten years ago. Blogging is a way of collecting links to webpages and sharing thoughts and ideas with people online. Blogging has become something of a big thing in the last few years, and some of the biggest and best known weblogs attract the kind of traffic that even big name e-commerce sites would be jealous of. Blogging is the verb (action word) that has been coined by people to refer to the act of adding an entry or entries to a blog. Those that actively engage in blogging write entries almost hourly, but there is no rule for how often a blog entry must be added. It is entirely to the individual. The true power of the blog comes from its interactivity with visitors and other blogs. As an author you can allow your web visitors to comment on your entries, the comments, then being published along side or in separate window of the entry. On your blog, you can keep track of when

other blogs reference one of your entries. You can have their references to your site be automatically published on your site. Your website is no longer an island visited by anonymous people only known to you by the page view statistics your web host gives you about your site. Your visitors, at least those who either comment on your blog, or make a comment about your blog on their blog have a name, an email address, website an identity. As you find other blogs that you like to read, you link to them on your blog site. And as others find your blog interesting, they link to you as well. All of this helps build a community of those who share a common interest in each others content. What makes blogging different from writing to any other kind of web site? For one thing, tools. Even with great web development tools Adobe and Macromedia, building a web page is a pain. It just takes time, a lot of work, too much time if you are just going to say a sentence or two. And once youve made a page, updating it takes time too. The blogging tools that are freely available to the public have changed the nature of the web publishing. Its easy. You log in to your weblog control page, you type in your entry, you click on Save and presto! Your entry is now published to your website. Why does blogging mater? It gives you a place to easily store interesting bits of information and ideas that you come across. The computer is more efficient at searching that the brain is, and better storage. We forget things. The computer doesnt. With a blog even better, the stored knowledge is on the net, accessible from anywhere in the world. 1. Writing your thoughts down, on paper or computer, is a good mental, discipline. It sharpens your intellect, it refines your thinking. It helps clarify your thoughts so that you communicate them better. It puts you in the position of creator rather than passive consumer of content. 2. By opening up your blogs to comments, you invite the collective intelligence of your readers to add your thoughts and to contribute to your knowledge. Youve created a collaborative thought space. 3. Young people are blogging en masse. One blogging site, Live Journal, cites 650,000 active accounts, 95% of which are from users under the age of 30. Blog sites are replacing home pages because of the ease of publishing, the dept of functionality, and the connections with other bloggers. 4. If you produce a website, your website will score higher in Google rankings if your site is a blog. Google rewards sites for rapidly changing content and links outbound and inbound from other sites, which is the nature of blogs. 5. The best content will get most exposure as more blogs link to it and more people comment to it. The publishing and distributing of content will become decentralized, shifting power away from the major media companies. Advantages of blogging The advantages of blogs from an organizational perspective include the following:

The consumer and citizen are potentially better informed and this can only be good for the long-term health of our societies and economies. Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact with the human face of the organization through blogs. Blogs, in an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing knowledge within the organization. Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story ideas , etc. Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the organization as having talent and expertise.

Others advantages are: Blogging is easy and instantaneous. It does not require site update procedures. It is easy and convenient to post as well as editing. *(Daren Sarathy) One of the most unique advantages of blogging is the ability and extends conversations that are occurring elsewhere on the internet. There is an opportunity to make money from blogs. Disadvantages of blogging * Most people dont have very much to say thats interesting, and/or are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner. *Very often the people who have most time to write have least to say, and the people who have most to say dont have enough time to write it. Thus, the real expertise within the organization lays hidden, as you get drowned in trivia. * Like practically everything else on the Web , blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain. Writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake. So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization. * Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.

An innovative tool for creating your company blog Creating your own blog is a great way of keeping friends, family, business partners and colleagues up to date with you, or your companies, latest ideas, experiences, stories and information. No matter the information you need / want to get online to allow others to read, the Internetters blog service allows you to do it quickly and easily without having to have any prior technical knowledge or

having to download any additional software.*Internetters bolgs are not just for personal use. They can be used by business to: publish press releases, manage job boards, share information between internal project teams, and develop deeper relationships with customers and more. The internetters blog is an innovative tool-perfect for creating your company blog. It gives you the opportunity to: Enhance internal Communication You can publish online through your PC, PPC or mobile phone Generate ideals through live real-time brain storming sessions Create and track discussion groups for your project teams relationships Extend your customer experience to the internet Launch products and enhancements as they occur Develop connections to open-up dialogue and receive feedback instantly Strengthen Your Customer

Recommendation Despite the overload of information, we recommend that you try to learn something more about blogging. Its a very interesting subject and very much in trend. As we said, there are more than 11 million blogs on the Internet, and there are as much unique blogs as there are people. So we have some recommendations for all that are interested in this subject. First, find as much as you can information about blogging, because its a very actual subject, so you will be in touch with what is happening in the modern world. So, try to create your own blog and join the widespread community of bloggers. Conclusion It is a fact that the world is moving very fast in these days, and you may have a problem if you want to stay updated for the newest information and all the things that are happening around you. Technology has given us a lot of help in solving this problem. It started with e-mails, web-pages, SMS. And even all this was not enough for the enormous quantity of information to get to us. Blogging has become the newest hit in communication. It is fast, it is secure, and it is all the people need to find what they are looking for. The main point is that people want to write as much as possible and to record as much of the experience they can and now blogging can provide all of that without loosing any time or data. Blogging has provided us with a new way of communication where can we create blog communities for learning, sharing ideas, making friends or doing businesses. It is a fact that blogging is a raising channel for communication in the past few years especially for teenagers and people under 30. But this doesnt mean that other people arent using blogging also. There are a lot of companies that find that the blogging is very useful for creating and sharing ideas among the employees.

Today blogging is the easiest way to share information over the Net. Its easy to use and it doesnt take a lot of time. You can find what ever you want in just few seconds with simple clicking. Although blogging has some disadvantages but there are a lot of advantages that are making blogging the biggest tool for sharing information today.