A blog (a
truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
published on the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in
reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the
web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally
edited
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...
. MABs from
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...
s, other
media outlet
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information ...
s, universities,
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
s,
advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog
traffic
Traffic comprises pedestrians, vehicles, ridden or herded animals, trains, and other conveyances that use public ways (roads) for travel and transportation.
Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffi ...
. The rise of
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and other "
microblogging
Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...
" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. ''Blog'' can also be used as a verb, meaning ''to maintain or add content to a blog''.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users who did not have much experience with
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...
or
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...
. Previously, knowledge of such technologies as HTML and
File Transfer Protocol
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...
had been required to publish content on the Web, and early Web users therefore tended to be
hacker
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
s and computer enthusiasts. In the 2010s, the majority are interactive
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
websites, allowing visitors to leave online comments, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of
social networking service. Indeed, bloggers not only produce content to post on their blogs but also often build social relations with their readers and other bloggers. However, there are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject or topic, ranging from
philosophy,
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
, and
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
s to
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
,
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...
, and
sport
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
s. Others function as more personal
online diaries or
online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines text,
digital images, and
links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave publicly viewable comments, and interact with other commenters, is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. However, blog owners or authors often
moderate
Moderate is an ideological category which designates a rejection of radical or extreme views, especially in regard to politics and religion. A moderate is considered someone occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views. In American ...
and
filter
Filter, filtering or filters may refer to:
Science and technology
Computing
* Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming
* Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream
* Filter (video), a software component tha ...
online comments to remove
hate speech or other offensive content. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (''
art blog
An art blog is a common type of blog that comments on art. More recently, as with other types of blogs, some art blogs have taken on 'web 2.0' social networking features. Art blogs that adopt this sort of change can develop to become a source ...
s''), photographs (''
photoblog
A photoblog (or photolog) is a form of photo sharing and publishing in the format of a blog. It differs from a blog through the predominant use of and focus on photographs rather than text. Photoblogging (the action of posting photos to a photob ...
s''), videos (''
video blog
A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in ...
s'' or "''vlogs''"), music (''
MP3 blog
An MP3 blog is a type of blog in which the creator makes music files, normally in the MP3 format, available for download. They are also known as musicblogs, audioblogs or soundblogs (the latter two can also mean podcasts). MP3 blogs have become ...
s''), and audio (''
podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...
s''). In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources; these are referred to as ''
edublog
An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support student and teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinki ...
s''.
Microblogging
Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...
is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
'Blog' and 'blogging' are now loosely used for content creation and sharing on
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
, especially when the content is long-form and one creates and shares content on regular basis. So, one could be maintaining a blog on
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
or blogging on
Instagram.
, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.
On February 20, 2014, there were around 172 million
Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
and 75.8 million
WordPress
WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...
blogs in existence worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers in 2010 and 2014,
Blogger
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
was the most popular blogging service in use. However, Blogger does not offer public statistics.
Technorati
Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad network ...
lists 1.3 million blogs as of February 22, 2014.
History
![Eastcampusfire glog crop](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Eastcampusfire_glog_crop.png)
The term "weblog" was coined by
Jorn Barger
Jorn Barger (; born 1953) is an American blogger, best known as editor of ''Robot Wisdom'', an influential early weblog. Barger coined the term ''weblog'' to describe the process of "logging the web" as he surfed. He has also written extensively ...
on December 17, 1997. The short form, "blog", was coined by
Peter Merholz
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a su ...
, who jokingly broke the word ''weblog'' into the phrase ''we blog'' in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter,
Evan Williams at
Pyra Labs
Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of Google (Alphabet) that created the Blogger service in 1999. Google acquired Pyra Labs in 2003.
History
Pyra was co-founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. The company's first product, also named "Pyra", was a web ...
used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog", meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs'
Blogger
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
Origins
Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
, commercial online services such as
GEnie
Jinn ( ar, , ') – also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirit or demon, depending on sources)
– are invisible creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems and later in Islamic myt ...
,
Byte Information Exchange BYTE Information eXchange (BIX) was an online service created by ''BYTE''.
History
''BYTE'' in the October 1984 issue announced BYTEnet, "a project in computer conferencing", with 200 beta testers who received free service during the "experiment". ...
(BIX) and the early
CompuServe,
e-mail lists, and
Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s,
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
software created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a virtual "
corkboard". From June 14, 1993, Mosaic Communications Corporation maintained their "What's New" list of new websites, updated daily and archived monthly. The page was accessible by a special "What's New" button in the Mosaic web browser.
The earliest instance of a commercial blog was on the first
business to consumer
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...
Web site created in 1995 by
Ty, Inc.
Ty (stylized as ty) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It was founded by Ty Warner in 1986. It designs, develops and sells products, most notably Beanie Babies, exclusively to spec ...
, which featured a blog in a section called "Online Diary". The entries were maintained by featured
Beanie Babies
Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman H. Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986. The toys are stuffed with plastic pellets ("beans") rather than conventional soft stuffing. They come in many different forms, ...
that were voted for monthly by Web site visitors.
The modern blog evolved from the
online diary An online diary or web diary, is a personal diary or journal that is published on the World Wide Web on a personal website or a diary-hosting website.
Overview
Online diaries have existed since at least 1994. As a community formed, these publicat ...
where people would keep a running account of the events in their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers.
Justin Hall
Justin Hall (born December 16, 1974 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American journalist and entrepreneur, best known as a pioneer blogger.
Biography
Born in Chicago, Hall graduated Francis W. Parker High School in 1993. In 1994, while a student ...
, who began personal blogging in 1994 while a student at
Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earlier bloggers, as is
Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s ...
.
Dave Winer
Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web servi ...
's Scripting News is also credited with being one of the older and longer running weblogs. The Australian Netguide magazine maintained the Daily Net News on their web site from 1996. Daily Net News ran links and daily reviews of new websites, mostly in Australia.
Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, digital video, and digital pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and
EyeTap
An EyeTap is a concept for a wearable computing device that is worn in front of the eye that acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose computer-generated imagery on the original scene availabl ...
device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as
sousveillance
Sousveillance ( ) is the recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organisation in authority, typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. The term, coined by Steve Mann, stems from th ...
, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters. Some early bloggers, such as The Misanthropic Bitch, who began in 1997, actually referred to their online presence as a
zine
A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...
, before the term blog entered common usage.
The first research paper about blogging was
Torill Mortensen Torill, also written Toril and Thorill, is a Norwegian feminine given name. It may refer to:
* Toril Brekke (born 1949), Norwegian novelist and author
* Torill Eide (born 1950), Norwegian children's writer
* Torill Eidsheim (born 1970), Norwegian ...
and
Jill Walker Rettberg
Jill Walker Rettberg (born Jill Walker in 1971) is Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She is "a leading researcher in self-representation in social media" and a European Research Council grantee (2018-2023) with the proj ...
's paper "Blogging Thoughts", which analysed how blogs were being used to foster research communities and the exchange of ideas and scholarship, and how this new means of networking overturns traditional power structures.
Technology
Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common Websites. In 1995, the "Online Diary" on the
Ty, Inc.
Ty (stylized as ty) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It was founded by Ty Warner in 1986. It designs, develops and sells products, most notably Beanie Babies, exclusively to spec ...
Web site was produced and updated manually before any blogging programs were available. Posts were made to appear in reverse chronological order by manually updating text-based
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...
code using
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
software in real time several times a day. To users, this offered the appearance of a live diary that contained multiple new entries per day. At the beginning of each new day, new diary entries were manually coded into a new HTML file, and at the start of each month, diary entries were archived into their own folder, which contained a separate HTML page for every day of the month. Then, menus that contained links to the most recent diary entry were updated manually throughout the site. This text-based method of organizing thousands of files served as a springboard to define future blogging styles that were captured by blogging software developed years later.
The evolution of electronic and software tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible for a much larger and less technically-inclined population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated
blog hosting services, on regular
web hosting service
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web ...
s, or run using blog software.
Rise in popularity
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
*
Bruce Ableson
Bruce Ableson (born September 16, 1963 in New York) is an American computer programmer and website developer. He is best known as the inventor of Open Diary, the first online blogging community.
Ableson was raised in West Bloomfield Township, M ...
launched
Open Diary
Open Diary (often abbreviated as "OD") is an online diary community, an early example of social networking software. It was founded on October 20, 1998. Open Diary went offline on February 7, 2014, but was re-launched on January 26, 2018. The ...
in October 1998, which soon grew to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
*
Brad Fitzpatrick
Bradley Joseph Fitzpatrick (born February 5, 1980) is an American programmer. He is best known as the creator of LiveJournal and is the author of a variety of free software projects such as memcached, PubSubHubbub, OpenID, and Perkeep.
Early life ...
started
LiveJournal
LiveJournal (russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary.
American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, a ...
in March 1999.
* Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a Web site, followed by DiaryLand in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.
*
Evan Williams and
Meg Hourihan
Meg Hourihan is the cofounder of Pyra Labs, the company that launched the Blogger.com, Blogger personal blogging software that was acquired by Google.
Career
Hourihan graduated from Tufts University in 1994.
In 1999, she and Evan Williams (Int ...
(
Pyra Labs
Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of Google (Alphabet) that created the Blogger service in 1999. Google acquired Pyra Labs in 2003.
History
Pyra was co-founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. The company's first product, also named "Pyra", was a web ...
) launched
Blogger.com
Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 which enables multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed thr ...
in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003)
Political impact
An early milestone in the rise in importance of blogs came in 2002, when many bloggers focused on comments by
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott
Chester Trent Lott Sr. (born October 9, 1941) is an American lawyer, author, and politician. A former United States Senator from Mississippi, Lott served in numerous leadership positions in both the United States House of Representatives and the ...
.
Senator Lott, at a party honoring
U.S. Senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
Strom Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott's critics saw these comments as tacit approval of
racial segregation
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
, a policy advocated by Thurmond's
1948 presidential campaign
The 1948 United States presidential election was the 41st quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. In one of the greatest election upsets in American history, incumbent President Harry S. Truman, the Democr ...
. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. (See
Josh Marshall
Joshua Micah Jesajan-Dorja Marshall (born February 15, 1969) is an American journalist and blogger who founded ''Talking Points Memo'', which in 2004 a writer for ''The New York Times Magazine'' called "one of the most popular and most respected ...
's ''
Talking Points Memo
''Talking Points Memo'' (''TPM'') is a liberal political news and opinion website created and run by Josh Marshall that debuted on November 12, 2000. The name is a reference to the memo (short list) consisting of the issues (points) discussed b ...
''.) Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.
Similarly, blogs were among the driving forces behind the "
Rathergate
The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate) involved six documents containing false allegations about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. Da ...
" scandal. To wit: (television journalist)
Dan Rather
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist, commentator, and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hur ...
presented documents (on the CBS show ''
60 Minutes'') that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Bloggers declared the documents to be
forgeries
Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbid ...
and presented evidence and arguments in support of that view. Consequently, CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques (see
Little Green Footballs). Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by the mass media, both as a news source and opinion and as means of applying political pressure. The impact of these stories gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis.
In Russia, some political bloggers have started to challenge the dominance of official, overwhelmingly pro-government media. Bloggers such as
Rustem Adagamov
Rustem Rinatovich Adagamov (russian: Русте́м Рина́тович Адага́мов) is a Russian blogger who goes by the pseudonym of "Drugoi" ("Другой"), meaning "Another".[Alexei Navalny
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny ( rus, links=no, Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, , ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj; born 4 June 1976) is a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption act ...]
have many followers, and the latter's nickname for the ruling
United Russia
United Russia ( rus, Единая Россия, Yedinaya Rossiya, (j)ɪˈdʲinəjə rɐˈsʲijə) is a Russian conservative political party. As the largest party in Russia, it holds 325 (or 72.22%) of the 450 seats in the State Duma , havin ...
party as the "party of crooks and thieves" has been adopted by anti-regime protesters. This led to ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' calling Navalny "the man
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
fears most" in March 2012.
Mainstream popularity
By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as
political consultant
Political consulting is a form of consulting that consists primarily of advising and assisting political campaigns. Although the most important role of political consultants is arguably the development and production of mass media (largely tel ...
s, 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. (See
Howard Dean
Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American physician, author, lobbyist, and retired politician who served as the 79th governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2005 to 2009 ...
and
Wesley Clark
Wesley Kanne Clark (born December 23, 1944) is a retired United States Army officer. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree ...
.) Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the
UK's Labour Party's Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
(MP)
Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents. In January 2005, ''
Fortune'' magazine listed eight bloggers whom business people "could not ignore":
Peter Rojas
Peter Rojas (born March 18, 1975) is the co-founder of technology blogs Gizmodo and Engadget, as well as the video gaming blog Joystiq (2004).
Education
Rojas attended Harvard University from 1993 to 1997 where he managed the school's radio sta ...
,
Xeni Jardin
Xeni Jardin (; born Jennifer Hamm, August 5, 1970) is an American weblogger, digital media commentator, and tech culture journalist. She is known as a former co-editor of the collaborative weblog ''Boing Boing'', a former contributor to '' ''Wire ...
,
Ben Trott,
Mena Trott
Mena Grabowski Trott (born Philomena Frances Grabowski on 16 September 1977, now Mena Grabowski Lazar) is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad.
Career
Trott was president of Six Apart. The company name originates from t ...
,
Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman,
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble (born January 18, 1965) is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, ''Scobleizer'', which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He later worked ...
, and
Jason Calacanis
Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970) is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York. His second venture, Weblogs, Inc., a publishing company tha ...
.
Israel was among the first national governments to set up an official blog.
[Israel Video Blog aims to show the world 'the beautiful face of real Israel']
Ynet, February 24, 2008. Under
David Saranga
David Saranga ( he, דוד סרנגה) (born February 18, 1964) is Israel's ambassador in Romania. He served as the Senior Foreign Affairs Advisor to the President of the State of Israel, Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin, and former Head of European Parliamen ...
, the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( he, מִשְׂרַד הַחוּץ, translit. ''Misrad HaHutz''; ar, وزارة الخارجية الإسرائيلية) is one of the most important ministries in the Israeli government. The ministry's ...
became active in adopting
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
initiatives, including an official
video blog
A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in ...
[ and a ]political blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
.[Latest PR venture of Israel's diplomatic mission in New York attracts large Arab audience]
Ynet, June 21, 2007. The Foreign Ministry also held a microblogging
Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...
press conference via Twitter about its war with Hamas, with Saranga answering questions from the public in common text-messaging abbreviations during a live worldwide press conference. The questions and answers were later posted on IsraelPolitik, the country's official political blog.[The Toughest Q's Answered in the Briefest Tweets]
Noam Cohen, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', January 3, 2009. Retrieved January 5, 2009.
The impact of blogging on the mainstream media has also been acknowledged by governments. In 2009, the presence of the American journalism industry had declined to the point that several newspaper corporations were filing for bankruptcy, resulting in less direct competition between newspapers within the same circulation area. Discussion emerged as to whether the newspaper industry would benefit from a stimulus package by the federal government. U.S. President Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
acknowledged the emerging influence of blogging upon society by saying, "if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, then what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void, but not a lot of mutual understanding". Between 2009 and 2012, an Orwell Prize
The Orwell Prize, based at University College London, is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity (Registered Charity No 1161563, formerly "The Orwell Prize") governed by a boa ...
for blogging was awarded.
Types
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.
;Personal blogs: The personal blog is an ongoing online diary or commentary written by an individual, rather than a corporation or organization. While the vast majority of personal blogs attract very few readers, other than the blogger's immediate family and friends, a small number of personal blogs have become popular, to the point that they have attracted lucrative advertising sponsorship. A tiny number of personal bloggers have become famous, both in the online community and in the real world.
;Collaborative blogs or group blogs: A type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The majority of high-profile collaborative blogs are organised according to a single uniting theme, such as politics, technology or advocacy. In recent years, the blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...
has seen the emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, often set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool time and resources, both to reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular website and to attract a larger readership.
;Microblogging
Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...
: Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many users. It has captured the public imagination, in part because the short posts are easy to read on the go or when waiting. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications. The resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these include Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
and, by far the largest, Weibo.
;Corporate and organizational blogs: A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business or not-for-profit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
or government purposes. Blogs used internally and only available to employees via an Intranet are called corporate blog
Corporate blog is a blog that is published and used by an organization, corporation, etc. to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally str ...
s. Companies use internal corporate blogs to enhance the communication, culture and employee engagement
Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is defined as one who is ...
in a corporation. Internal corporate blogs can be used to communicate news about company policies or procedures, build employee esprit de corps and improve morale
Morale, also known as esprit de corps (), is the capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal, particularly in the face of opposition or hardship. Morale is often referenced by authority figures as a generic value ...
. Companies and other organizations also use external, publicly accessible blogs for marketing, branding, or public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...
purposes. Some organizations have a blog authored by their executive; in practice, many of these executive blog posts are penned by a ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often ...
who makes posts in the style of the credited author. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities.
;Aggregated blogs: Individuals or organization may aggregate selected feeds on a specific topic, product or service and provide a combined view for its readers. This allows readers to concentrate on reading instead of searching for quality on-topic content and managing subscriptions. Many such aggregations called planets from name of Planet (software)
Planet is a feed aggregator that runs on a web server. It creates pages with entries from the original feeds in chronological order, most recent entries first.
Etymology
In online media a planet is a feed aggregator application designed to col ...
that perform such aggregation, hosting sites usually have ''planet.'' subdomain in domain name
A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
(like http://planet.gnome.org/).
;By genre: Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
s, journalism blogs, health blog
Health blogs are niche blogs that cover health topics, events and/or related content of the health industry and the general community.
Definition
A health blog can cover diverse health related concerns such as nutrition and diet, fitness, weig ...
s, travel blog
The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.
One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern pe ...
s (also known as ''travelogs''), gardening blogs, house blogs, Book Blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
s, fashion blog
Fashion blogs are blogs that cover the fashion industry, clothing, and lifestyle.
Definition
A fashion blog can cover many topics, such as specific items of clothing and accessories, beauty tips, trends in various apparel markets (haute couture ...
s, beauty blogs, lifestyle blogs, party blogs, wedding blogs, photography blogs, project blogs, psychology blogs, sociology blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs, legal blogs
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
(often referred to as a blawgs), or dreamlogs. How-to
The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) is a dormant an all-volunteer project that maintains a large collection of GNU and Linux-related documentation and publishes the collection online. It began as a way for hackers to share their documentation ...
/Tutorial
A tutorial, in education, is a method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture, a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete ...
blogs are becoming increasing popular. Two common types of genre blogs are art blog
An art blog is a common type of blog that comments on art. More recently, as with other types of blogs, some art blogs have taken on 'web 2.0' social networking features. Art blogs that adopt this sort of change can develop to become a source ...
s and music blog
An MP3 blog is a type of blog in which the creator makes music files, normally in the MP3 format, available for download. They are also known as musicblogs, audioblogs or soundblogs (the latter two can also mean podcasts). MP3 blogs have become ...
s. A blog featuring discussions, especially about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a splog
A spam blog, also known as an auto blog or the neologism splog, is a blog which the author uses to promote affiliated websites, to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites or to simply sell links/ads.
The purpose of a splog can be ...
.
;By media type: A blog comprising videos is called a vlog
A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded i ...
, one comprising links is called a linklog
A linklog is a type of blog which is meant to act as a linked list. Common practice is for the post titles to link directly to an external URLs, and the content of the post includes information to complement the associated URL.
Linklogs existed ...
, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog
A photoblog (or photolog) is a form of photo sharing and publishing in the format of a blog. It differs from a blog through the predominant use of and focus on photographs rather than text. Photoblogging (the action of posting photos to a photob ...
. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs. A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol
The Gopher protocol () is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to ...
is known as a phlog
A phlog, also called an rlog, is a type of daybook, similar to a blog, that runs off a Gopher protocol server. These phlogs are typically hosted from home servers running some sort of UNIX operating system, because a user account on the server is ...
.
;By device: A blog can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physica ...
like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog
Mobile blogging (also known as mobloggingIto, M. (2002) 'Mobiles and the appropriation of place', receiver magazine, 8, www.receiver.vodafone.com) is a method of publishing to a website or blog from a mobile phone or other handheld device. A moblog ...
. One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap
An EyeTap is a concept for a wearable computing device that is worn in front of the eye that acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose computer-generated imagery on the original scene availabl ...
device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance
Sousveillance ( ) is the recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organisation in authority, typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. The term, coined by Steve Mann, stems from th ...
. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.
;Reverse blog A reverse blog is a type of blog
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts a ...
: A reverse blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog and the writing of several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors on a topic or opened up for anyone to write. There is typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a web forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
.
Community and cataloging
;Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...
: The collective community of all blogs and blog authors, particularly notable and widely read blogs, is known as the ''blogosphere''. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkback
A linkback is a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to, their articles. The four methods ( refback, trackback, p ...
s (refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks), and backlinks. Discussions "in the blogosphere" were occasionally used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues. Because new, untapped communities of bloggers and their readers can emerge in the space of a few years, Internet marketers pay close attention to "trends in the blogosphere".
;Blog search engines
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
: Several blog search engines have been used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines (defunct), BlogScope
BlogScope was a search engine for the blogosphere with advanced analysis and visualization technology, founded in 2005. as an outcome of a research project at the University of Toronto. As of Apr 2009, the system indexed over 725 million blog pos ...
(defunct), and Technorati
Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad network ...
(defunct).
;Blogging communities and directories: Several online communities
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...
exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers. Interest-specific blogging platforms are also available. For instance, Blogster has a sizable community of political bloggers among its members. Global Voices aggregates international bloggers, "with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media."
;Blogging and advertising: It is common for blogs to feature banner advertisement
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linkin ...
s or promotional content, either to financially benefit the blogger, support website hosting costs, or to promote the blogger's favourite causes or products. The popularity of blogs has also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.
As the popularity of blogging continued to rise (as of 2006), the commercialisation of blogging is rapidly increasing. Many corporations and companies collaborate with bloggers to increase advertising and engage online communities with their products. In the book ''Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers'', Henry Jenkins stated that "Bloggers take knowledge into their own hands, enabling successful navigation within and between these emerging knowledge cultures. One can see such behaviour as co-optation into commodity culture insofar as it sometimes collaborates with corporate interests, but one can also see it as increasing the diversity of media culture, providing opportunities for greater inclusiveness, and making more responsive to consumers."
Popularity
*Before 2006: The blogdex
Blogdex was an online resource for understanding hot topics of discussion in the blogosphere.
The site offered a time-weighted list of links to online content cited by more than one monitored blog in the recent past. Each link received a score bas ...
project was launched by researchers in the MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
to crawl the Web and gather data from thousands of blogs to investigate their social properties. Information was gathered by the tool for over four years, during which it autonomously tracked the most contagious information spreading in the blog community, ranking it by recency and popularity. It can, therefore, be considered the first instantiation of a memetracker {{Refimprove, date=June 2007
A memetracker is a tool for studying the migration of memes across a group of people. The term is typically used to describe websites that either:
#analyze blog posts to determine what web pages are being discussed or c ...
. The project was replaced by tailrank.com Tailrank.com was a site that provided a feed of content on the World Wide Web that was being discussed across the blogosphere. The site continuously scanned blogs that had been registered with it, and composed an index of "top stories" that had be ...
, which in turn has been replaced by spinn3r.com.
*2006: Blogs are given rankings by Alexa Internet (web hits of Alexa Toolbar users), and formerly by blog search engine Technorati
Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad network ...
based on the number of incoming links (Technorati stopped doing this in 2014). In August 2006, Technorati found that the most linked-to blog on the internet was that of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei
Xu Jinglei (, born 16 April 1974 in Chaoyang District, Beijing) is a Chinese actress and film director. She was hailed as one of the Four Dan Actresses in China. In 2002, Xu won the Huabiao Award for Outstanding New Actress for her performance ...
.[Fickling, David]
Internet killed the TV star
''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' NewsBlog, August 15, 2006 Chinese media Xinhua
Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
reported that this blog received more than 50 million page views, claiming it to be the most popular blog in the world. Technorati rated Boing Boing
''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twic ...
to be the most-read group-written blog.
*2008: , blogging had become such a mania that a new blog was created every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Researchers have actively analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through affiliation (i.e., blogroll). The basic conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that while it takes time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls, permalink
A permalink or permanent link is a URL that is intended to remain unchanged for many years into the future, yielding a hyperlink that is less susceptible to link rot. Permalinks are often rendered simply, that is, as clean URLs, to be easier to ...
s can boost popularity more quickly and are perhaps more indicative of popularity and authority than blogrolls since they denote that people are actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases.
Blurring with the mass media
Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in participatory journalism, are amateur journalists, and thus they differentiate themselves from the professional reporters and editors who work in mainstream media organizations. Other bloggers are media professionals who are publishing online, rather than via a TV station or newspaper, either as an add-on to a traditional media presence (e.g., hosting a radio show or writing a column in a paper newspaper), or as their sole journalistic output. Some institutions and organizations see blogging as a means of "getting around the filter" of media "gatekeeper
A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate or bouncer, or more abstractly, controls who is granted access to a category or status. Gatekeepers assess who is "in or out", in the classic words of manage ...
s" and pushing their messages directly to the public. Many mainstream journalists, meanwhile, write their own blogs—well over 300, according to CyberJournalist.net's J-blog list. The first known use of a blog on a news site was in August 1998, when Jonathan Dube of ''The Charlotte Observer
''The Charlotte Observer'' is an American English-language newspaper serving Charlotte, North Carolina, and its metro area. The Observer was founded in 1886. As of 2020, it has the second-largest circulation of any newspaper in the Carolinas. I ...
'' published one chronicling Hurricane Bonnie.
Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black
Duncan Black, FBA (23 May 1908 – 14 January 1991) was a Scottish economist who laid the foundations of social choice theory. In particular he was responsible for unearthing the work of many early political scientists, including Charles Lutw ...
(known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds
Glenn Harlan Reynolds (born August 27, 1960) is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, and is known for his American politics blog, '' Instapundit''.
Authorship Instapundit blog
Reynold ...
(Instapundit
Instapundit is a blog maintained by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee.
History and characteristics
InstaPundit was launched in August 2001 as an experiment, and a part of Reynolds' class on Internet law. After the Sep ...
), Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (; born September 11, 1971), often known by his username and former military nickname "Kos" ( ), is an American blogger who is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos, a blog focusing on Modern liberalism in the United S ...
(Daily Kos
Daily Kos ( ) is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party and liberal American politics. The site includes glossaries and other content. It is sometimes considered an example of " netroots" activism.
Daily Kos was ...
), Alex Steffen
Alex Steffen (born 1968) is an American futurist who writes and speaks about sustainability and the future of the planet. He emphasizes the importance of imagining persuasive, positive possible futures: "It's literally true that we can't build ...
(Worldchanging
Worldchanging was a nonprofit online publisher that operated from 2003 to 2010. Its strapline was ''A bright green future''. It published newsletters and books about sustainability, bright green environmentalism, futurism and social innovation.
...
), Ana Marie Cox
Ana Marie Cox (born September 23, 1972) is an American author, blogger, political columnist, and critic. The founding editor of the political blog '' Wonkette'', she was also the Senior Political Correspondent for MTV News, and conducted the "Ta ...
(Wonkette
''Wonkette'' is an American online magazine of topical and political gossip, established in 2004 by Gawker Media and founding editor Ana Marie Cox. The editor since 2012 is Rebecca Schoenkopf, formerly of ''OC Weekly''. ''Wonkette'' covers U.S. ...
), Nate Silver
Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics), basketball, and elections (see psephology). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of ''FiveThirtyEigh ...
( FiveThirtyEight.com), and Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein (born May 10, 1984) is an American journalist, political analyst, ''New York Times'' columnist, and the host of ''The Ezra Klein Show'' podcast. He is a co-founder of '' Vox'' and formerly served as the website's editor-at-large. He h ...
(Ezra Klein blog in ''The American Prospect
''The American Prospect'' is a daily online and bimonthly print American political and public policy magazine dedicated to American modern liberalism and progressivism. Based in Washington, D.C., ''The American Prospect'' says it "is devoted t ...
,'' now in ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'). In counterpoint, Hugh Hewitt
Hugh Hewitt (born February 22, 1956) is an American radio talk show host with the Salem Radio Network and an attorney, academic, and author. A conservative, he writes about law, society, politics, and media bias in the United States. Hewitt is ...
exemplifies a mass media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger. Similarly, it was ''Emergency Preparedness and Safety Tips On Air and Online'' blog articles that captured Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona's attention and earned his kudos for the associated broadcasts by talk show host Lisa Tolliver and Westchester Emergency Volunteer Reserves-Medical Reserve Corps
The Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) is a network in the U.S. of community-based units initiated and established by local organizations aimed to meet the public health needs of their communities. It is sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary ...
Director Marianne Partridge.
Blogs have also had an influence on minority language
A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) a ...
s, bringing together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with blogs in Gaelic languages
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
. Minority language publishing (which may lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive blogging. There are examples of bloggers who have published books based on their blogs, e.g., Salam Pax
Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem ( ar, سلام عبد المنعم), aka Salam al-Janabi ( ar, سلام الجنابي), under which he became the "most famous blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Along ...
, Ellen Simonetti, Jessica Cutler
Jessica Louise Cutler (born May 18, 1978 in Monterey, California) is a blogger, an author, and former congressional staff assistant who was fired for detailing her active sexual life, including receiving money for having sex (prostitution), in ...
, and ScrappleFace
ScrappleFace is a U.S. website run by Scott Ott that satirizes the news from a conservative perspective.
History
The name ScrappleFace was coined by Ott's grandmother, Jessica McMaster (1915–2006), who cared for Ott and his brothers from the a ...
. Blog-based books have been given the name blook. A prize for the best blog-based book was initiated in 2005, the Lulu Blooker Prize
Lulu Press, Inc., doing business under trade name Lulu, is an online print-on-demand, self-publishing, and distribution platform. By 2014, it had issued approximately two million titles.
The company's founder is Red Hat co-founder Bob Young. Lu ...
. However, success has been elusive offline, with many of these books not selling as well as their blogs. The book based on Julie Powell
Julia Anne Powell (; April 20, 1973 – October 26, 2022) was an American author known for her 2005 book ''Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen'' which was based on her blog, the Julie/Julia Project. A film adaptation b ...
's blog "The Julie/Julia Project" was made into the film ''Julie & Julia
''Julie & Julia'' is a 2009 American biographical comedy-drama film written and directed by Nora Ephron starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, and Chris Messina. The film contrasts the life of chef Julia Child in the early years of her ...
'', apparently the first to do so.
Consumer-generated advertising
Consumer-generated advertising
Consumer-generated advertising is advertising on consumer generated media. This term is generally used to refer to sponsored content on blogs, wikis, Internet forum, forums, social networking services, and individual websites. This sponsored cont ...
is a relatively new and controversial development, and it has created a new model of marketing communication from businesses to consumers. Among the various forms of advertising on blog, the most controversial are the sponsored post
Sponsored post, also known as a promoted post, is a post to any community-driven notification-oriented website which is explicitly sponsored as an advertisement by a particular company in order to draw a large amount of popularity through user pro ...
s. These are blog entries or posts and may be in the form of feedback, reviews, opinion, videos, etc. and usually contain a link back to the desired site using a keyword or several keywords. Blogs have led to some disintermediation and a breakdown of the traditional advertising model, where companies can skip over the advertising agencies (previously the only interface with the customer) and contact the customers directly via social media websites. On the other hand, new companies specialised in blog advertising have been established to take advantage of this new development as well. However, there are many people who look negatively on this new development. Some believe that any form of commercial activity on blogs will destroy the blogosphere's credibility.
Legal and social consequences
Blogging can result in a range of legal liabilities and other unforeseen consequences.
Defamation or liability
Several cases have been brought before the national courts against bloggers concerning issues of defamation or liability. U.S. payouts related to blogging totalled $17.4 million by 2009; in some cases these have been covered by umbrella insurance
Umbrella insurance refers to liability insurance that is in excess of specified other policies and also potentially primary insurance for losses not covered by the other policies.
When an insured person is liable to someone, the insured's primary ...
. The courts have returned with mixed verdicts. Internet Service Provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...
s (ISPs), in general, are immune from liability for information that originates with third parties (U.S. Communications Decency Act and the EU Directive 2000/31/EC). In ''Doe v. Cahill'', the Delaware Supreme Court
The Delaware Supreme Court is the sole appellate court in the United States state of Delaware. Because Delaware is a popular haven for corporations, the Court has developed a worldwide reputation as a respected source of corporate law decision ...
held that stringent standards had to be met to unmask the anonymous bloggers
An anonymous blog is a blog without any acknowledged author or contributor. Anonymous bloggers may achieve anonymity through the simple use of a pseudonym, or through more sophisticated techniques such as layered encryption routing, manipulation ...
and also took the unusual step of dismissing the libel case itself (as unfounded under American libel law) rather than referring it back to the trial court
A trial court or court of first instance is a court having original jurisdiction, in which trials take place. Appeals from the decisions of trial courts are usually made by higher courts with the power of appellate review (appellate courts). Mos ...
for reconsideration. In a bizarre twist, the Cahills were able to obtain the identity of John Doe, who turned out to be the person they suspected: the town's mayor, Councilman Cahill's political rival. The Cahills amended their original complaint, and the mayor settled the case rather than going to trial.
In January 2007, two prominent Malaysian political bloggers, Jeff Ooi
Ooi Chuan Aun (; born 2 November 1955), better known as Jeff Ooi, is a Malaysian IT consultant, blogger, photographer and politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jelutong for two terms from March 2008 to May 2018.
He i ...
and Ahirudin Attan
Datuk Ahirudin bin Attan, (born 20 December 1961) also known as Rocky Bru, is a Malaysian blogger, journalist and former editor of several New Straits Times Press (NSTP) publications, including the '' Business Times'', ''The Malay Mail'' and ' ...
, were sued by a pro-government newspaper, The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira over alleged defamation. The plaintiff was supported by the Malaysian government. Following the suit, the Malaysian government proposed to "register" all bloggers in Malaysia to better control parties against their interests. This is the first such legal case against bloggers in the country. In the United States, blogger Aaron Wall was sued by Traffic Power for defamation and publication of trade secrets
Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information that have inherent economic value because they are not generally known or readily a ...
in 2005. According to ''Wired'' magazine, Traffic Power had been "banned from Google for allegedly rigging search engine results." Wall and other "white hat
White hat, white hats, or white-hat may refer to:
Art, entertainment, and media
* White hat, a way of thinking in Edward de Bono's book ''Six Thinking Hats''
* White hat, part of black and white hat symbolism in film
Other uses
* White hat (compu ...
" search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than dire ...
consultants had exposed Traffic Power in what they claim was an effort to protect the public. The case was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, and Traffic Power failed to appeal within the allowed time.
In 2009, NDTV
New Delhi Television Ltd is an Indian news media company focusing on broadcast and digital news publication. The company is considered to be a legacy brand that pioneered independent news broadcasting in India, and is credited for launching t ...
issued a legal notice to Indian blogger Kunte for a blog post criticizing their coverage of the Mumbai attacks
Terrorism in India, according to the Home Ministry, poses a significant threat to the people of India. Compared to other countries, India faces a wide range of terror groups. Terrorism found in India includes Islamic terrorism, separatist ...
. The blogger unconditionally withdrew his post, which resulted in several Indian bloggers criticizing NDTV for trying to silence critics.
Employment
Employees who blog about elements of their place of employment can begin to affect the reputation of their employer, either in a positive way, if the employee is praising the employer and its workplaces, or in a negative way, if the blogger is making negative comments about the company or its practices.
In general, attempts by employee bloggers to protect themselves by maintaining anonymity have proved ineffective. In 2009, a controversial and landmark decision by The Hon. Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of Richard Horton. Horton was a police officer in the United Kingdom who blogged about his job under the name "NightJack".
Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines, Inc., typically referred to as Delta, is one of the major airlines of the United States and a legacy carrier. One of the world's oldest airlines in operation, Delta is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline, along w ...
fired flight attendant Ellen Simonetti because she posted photographs of herself in uniform on an aeroplane and because of comments posted on her blog "Queen of Sky: Diary of a Flight Attendant" which the employer deemed inappropriate. This case highlighted the issue of personal blogging and freedom of expression versus employer rights and responsibilities, and so it received wide media attention. Simonetti took legal action against the airline for "wrongful termination, defamation of character and lost future wages". The suit was postponed while Delta was in bankruptcy proceedings.
In early 2006, Erik Ringmar, a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...
, was ordered by the convenor of his department to "take down and destroy" his blog in which he discussed the quality of education at the school.
Mark Jen was terminated in 2005 after 10 days of employment as an assistant product manager at Google for discussing corporate secrets on his personal blog, then called 99zeros and hosted on the Google-owned Blogger
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
service. He blogged about unreleased products and company finances a week before the company's earnings announcement. He was fired two days after he complied with his employer's request to remove the sensitive material from his blog.
In India, blogger Gaurav Sabnis resigned from IBM after his posts questioned the claims made by a management school. Jessica Cutler
Jessica Louise Cutler (born May 18, 1978 in Monterey, California) is a blogger, an author, and former congressional staff assistant who was fired for detailing her active sexual life, including receiving money for having sex (prostitution), in ...
, aka "The Washingtonienne", blogged about her sex life while employed as a congressional assistant. After the blog was discovered and she was fired, she wrote a novel based on her experiences and blog: ''The Washingtonienne: A Novel''. , Cutler is being sued by one of her former lovers in a case that could establish the extent to which bloggers are obligated to protect the privacy of their real life associates.
Catherine Sanderson, a.k.a. Petite Anglaise, lost her job in Paris at a British accountancy firm because of blogging. Although given in the blog in a fairly anonymous manner, some of the descriptions of the firm and some of its people were less than flattering. Sanderson later won a compensation claim case against the British firm, however.
On the other hand, Penelope Trunk
Penelope Trunk (born Adrienne Roston; legal name Adrienne Greenheart; pen name "Adrienne Eisen" December 10, 1966)) is an American writer and entrepreneur.
Trunk co-founded four venture-backed Internet startups, and TechCruch named Trunk, alo ...
wrote an upbeat article in ''The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' in 2006, entitled "Blogs 'essential' to a good career". She was one of the first journalists to point out that a large portion of bloggers are professionals and that a well-written blog can help attract employers.
Business owners
Business owners who blog about their business can also run into legal consequences. Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...
, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fined during the 2006 NBA playoffs for criticizing NBA officials on the court and in his blog.
Political dangers
Blogging can sometimes have unforeseen consequences in politically sensitive areas. In some countries, Internet police
Internet police is a generic term for police and government agencies, departments and other organizations in charge of policing Internet in a number of countries. The major purposes of Internet police, depending on the state, are fighting cyber ...
or secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of ...
may monitor blogs and arrest blog authors or commentators. Blogs can be much harder to control than broadcast or print media because a person can create a blog whose authorship is hard to trace by using anonymity technology such as Tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Sc ...
. As a result, totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
and authoritarian regimes often seek to suppress blogs and/or punish those who maintain them.
In Singapore, two ethnic Chinese individuals were imprisoned
Imprisonment is the restraint of a person's liberty, for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is "false imprisonment". Imprisonment does not necessari ...
under the country's anti-sedition law for posting anti-Muslim
Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism.
The scope and precise definition of the term ''Islamophobia'' ...
remarks in their blogs. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer
Kareem Nabil Suleiman Amer ( ar, كريم نبيل سليمان عامر, ) (born c. 1984) is an Egyptian Norwegian blogger and former law student. He was arrested by Egyptian authorities for posts on his blog that were considered to be anti-reli ...
was charged with insulting the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.
Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in ...
and an Islamic institution through his blog. It is the first time in the history of Egypt that a blogger was prosecuted. After a brief trial session that took place in Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...
, the blogger was found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition and one year for insulting Mubarak. Egyptian blogger Abdel Monem Mahmoud was arrested in April 2007 for anti-government writings in his blog. Monem is a member of the then banned Muslim Brotherhood. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January revolution ( ar, ثورة ٢٥ يناير; ), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police ho ...
, the Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad
Maikel Nabil Sanad (also transcribed as ''Michael'' arz, مايكل نبيل سند, ; born in 1985 in Asyut), is an Egyptian political activist, blogger, and a former political prisoner. He became famous in 2010 for refusing to serve in ...
was charged with insulting the military for an article he wrote on his personal blog and sentenced to 3 years.
After expressing opinions in his personal blog about the state of the Sudanese armed forces, Jan Pronk
Johannes Pieter "Jan" Pronk Jr. (; born 16 March 1940) is a retired Dutch politician and diplomat of the Labour Party (PvdA) and activist.
Pronk studied Economics at the Rotterdam School of Economics obtaining a Master of Economics degree and ...
, United Nations Special Representative for Sudan, was given three days notice to leave Sudan. The Sudanese army had demanded his deportation. In Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
, Nay Phone Latt, a blogger, was sentenced to 20 years in jail for posting a cartoon critical of head of state Than Shwe
Than Shwe ( my, သန်းရွှေ, ; born 2 February 1933 or 3 May 1935) is a Burmese strongman politician who was the head of state of Myanmar from 1992 to 2011 as Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
During this ...
.
Personal safety
One consequence of blogging is the possibility of online or in-person attacks or threats against the blogger, sometimes without apparent reason. In some cases, bloggers have faced cyberbullying
Cyberbullying or cyberharassment is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Cyberbullying and cyberharassment are also known as online bullying. It has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers, as the digital ...
. Kathy Sierra
Kathy Sierra (born 1957) is an American programming instructor and game developer.
Education and career
Sierra attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a major in exercise physiology and spent 10 years working in the fitness industry. She change ...
, author of the blog "Creating Passionate Users", was the target of threats and misogynistic
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced f ...
insults to the point that she cancelled her keynote speech at a technology conference in San Diego, fearing for her safety. While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous, Internet trolls
In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the in ...
who would attack a blogger with threats or insults can be emboldened by the anonymity of the online environment, where some users are known only by a pseudonymous "username" (e.g., "Hacker1984"). Sierra and supporters initiated an online discussion aimed at countering abusive online behaviour and developed a Blogger's Code of Conduct The Blogger's Code of Conduct was a proposal by Tim O'Reilly for bloggers to adopt a uniform policy for moderation of comments. It was proposed in 2007, in response to controversy involving threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra. The idea of the code ...
, which set out a rules for behaviour in the online space.
Behaviour
The Blogger's Code of Conduct The Blogger's Code of Conduct was a proposal by Tim O'Reilly for bloggers to adopt a uniform policy for moderation of comments. It was proposed in 2007, in response to controversy involving threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra. The idea of the code ...
is a list of seven proposed ideas.
See also
* Blog award
A blog award is an award for the best blog in a given category. Some blog awards are based on a public vote and others are based on a fixed set of criteria applied by a panel of judges.
Blog awards are a descendant phenomenon from awards given by ...
* BROG
Susan Catherine Herring (b. 1955) is an American linguist and communication scholar who researches gender differences in Internet use, and the characteristics, functions, and emergent norms associated with language, communication, and behavior in ...
* Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...
* Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...
* Collaborative blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
* Comparison of free blog hosting services
A number of websites offer free hosting of blogs. The services they offer are compared below. (This list is limited to services that have their own Wikipedia article.)
See also
* Comparison of file hosting services
* Comparison of online ba ...
* Customer engagement
* Glossary of blogging
This is a list of blogging terms.
Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.
Blog- ...
* Interactive journalism
* Internet think tank
* Israblog
Israblog ( he, ישראבלוג) is an Israeli blogging service, where mostly Hebrew-speaking Internet users keep blogs (including photoblogs) and enjoy many social networking features. With over 50,000 active bloggers, it is considered the bigge ...
* List of blogs
This is a list of notable blogs. A blog
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts ...
* List of family-and-homemaking blogs
Family-and-homemaking blogs are weblogs that feature commentary and discussions especially about home, family, and parenting. Appellations in media reports of "mom blog," "dad blog," "parenting blog" and "family blog" refer to blogs of this type. B ...
* Mass collaboration
Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-s ...
* Perzine
Perzines are a genre of zines; the "per" meaning "personal". Although most zines could be considered personal in that they represent the opinionated work of one person, this term describes zines that are written about one's own personal experienc ...
* Prison blogs
Prison blogs are weblogs written by people held in prison.
Examples of prison blogs
;New Zealand
* Tim Selwyn in Mount Eden Prison, New Zealand, ca.2006
; Thailand
Thai Prison Lifea collection of blogs and articles relating the experience of li ...
* Sideblog
A sideblog is a feature on a website, particularly a blog, that allows one to communicate smaller snippets of information than an actual blog post. The reasoning is that a blog post will require thought, argument and some semantic structuring of t ...
* Social blogging
* Think aloud protocol
A think-aloud (or thinking aloud) protocol is a method used to gather data in usability testing in product design and development, in psychology and a range of social sciences (e.g., reading, writing, translation research, decision making, and pro ...
* Webmaster
A webmaster is a person responsible for maintaining one or more websites. The title may refer to web architects, web developers, site authors, website administrators, website owners, website coordinators, or website publishers.
The duties of ...
* Web template system
A web template system in web publishing lets web designers and developers work with ''web templates'' to automatically generate custom web pages, such as the results from a search. This reuses static web page elements while defining dynamic e ...
* Web traffic
Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...
References
Further reading
* Alavi, Nasrin. ''We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs'', Soft Skull Press, New York, 2005. .
* Bruns, Axel, and Joanne Jacobs, eds. ''Uses of Blogs'', Peter Lang, New York, 2006. .
* Blood, Rebecca
"Weblogs: A History and Perspective"
. "Rebecca's Pocket".
* Kline, David; Burstein, Dan. ''Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture'', Squibnocket Partners, L.L.C., 2005. .
* Gorman, Michael
"Revenge of the Blog People!"
''Library Journal''.
*Heriot, Gail
Are Modern Bloggers Following in the Footsteps of Publius (and Other Musings on Blogging by Legal Scholars...)
8 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1113 (2006).
* Ringmar, Erik
A Blogger's Manifesto: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of the Internet
(London: Anthem Press, 2007).
* Rosenberg, Scott
''Say Everything: how blogging Began, what it's becoming, and why it matters''
New York : Crown Publishers, 2009.
*
External links
Computer Law and Security Report Volume 22 Issue 2, Pages 127–136
blogs, Lies and the Doocing by Sylvia Kierkegaard
Sylvia Mercado Kierkegaard was a Philippine jurist who specialized in computer law.
Her research covered a wide range of topics, including comparative contract law, alternative dispute resolution, intellectual property rights, European Union l ...
(2006)
Legal Guide for bloggers
by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Law Library Legal Blawgs Web Archive
from the U.S. Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
{{Authority control
Non-fiction genres
1990s neologisms
Diaries
Journalism
New media
Web 2.0