Blog is a website on which an author, known as a blogger, posts written entries. Most blogs relate the daily experiences of the author. Blog entries are typically made on a daily basis and usually are archived (saved) and indexed—often by keyword or date. The entries typically appear in chronological order—that is, the order in which they were written. The term blog is a shortened form of web log, which is what many of the first online diaries were called. Some of the earliest blogs evolved from personal home pages in the 1990’s, but the history of the blog can be traced to archived online discussions from the early Internet in the 1970’s.
In addition to the written entries, many blog pages display photos and videos. Most blogs also provide a means by which readers can write and leave comments after each blog entry. The blogger can, in turn, reply to those comments and thereby create an online discussion. Some bloggers join together to form communities, or blogrings. Typically, these rings form around particular subjects, such as politics or sports. The common term used to refer to blogs, bloggers, and blog readers is blogosphere.
Early blogs of the late 1990’s were generally little more than guides to websites that a blogger found interesting or worthy of comment. By 1999, blogging software, and especially the introduction that year of Blogger, a system of automated blog-publishing tools, made it easy to create a blog. The number of bloggers and the quality of blogs increased dramatically.
Many communications experts believe that blogs allow publishing to become more democratic, by easily allowing any Internet user to offer news, information, and opinion online. Because blogs can have a considerable influence on their readers, public relations and marketing firms have entered the blogosphere. It is now common to find celebrity blogs, corporate blogs, and even product blogs.
See also Podcast .
