Blogs - An overview

By Tony Allomes       Last Revised: December 2004

Intro
Blogs (web logs) have become a phenomenon of the Internet over the last few years. Effectively a personal diary provided for anyone to read, blogs continue to enjoy immense popularity. The business world has now joined the blogging ranks as a way to market products or services. Here’s an overview of blogs and what they are being used for.

Definition
The term "blog" is used as a shortened version of the term "web log" (sometimes shown as the one word "weblog"). It is used to describe the on-line publication of a diary or journal for others to read. Blogs are normally updated regularly and entries are listed in chronological order similar to a normal diary.

Blogs can be about any subject or in any style. While a large proportion are just the documented thoughts of individuals who are regular web-surfers, they are now also commonly used by journalists, politicians, and web-marketers.

While the idea of setting up an online diary has been around for some time, blogs really became popular about 5 years ago when automated publishing systems became more available.

Personal Use
Blogs are the ultimate in self-expression and stemmed from individuals using the Internet as a way of being heard. It’s now cheap and easy to publish your own blog and share your thoughts with the world. Whether the world actually wants to read them is another story of course!

Blogs can literally cover any topic or style and can also invite readers to comment or even provide content. While a lot of personal blogs are just observations or journals, there also some popular blogs that cover topics such as movies, music, televisions, politics etc.

Web Marketing
While blogs are not directly intended as a profit-based medium, businesses and web-marketers have jumped on the blogging bandwagon as a way to promote their products and/or services. The use of a RSS feed to publish/distribute blogs has also helped its popularity.

Apart from simply getting marketing messages across, blogs can also help with building credibility or respect with potential consumers. They can also help with improving search engine rankings through building links to/from various relevant blogs or sites.

Resources
Here are some resources to check out more blog-related information:

• Globe of Blogs (www.globeofblogs.com) contains list of 18,245 blogs registered worldwide including 625 from Australia.
• Blogger.com (www.blogger.com/start) - one of the main providers of blogging software worldwide
• Aussie Blogs (anthonyjhicks.com/aussieblogs) - contains details and updates for a large list of Australian blogs.

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