A sideblog is a feature on a website, particularly a

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 ...

, 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 the post, while a sideblog typically displays "brief asides". A sideblog is meant to illustrate your immediate thoughts, movements or status update, and is usually less than 200

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

. Where a blog post may be compared to a newspaper opinion piece, a sideblog would be akin to the "news in brief" column. Sideblogging is wedded to the concept of

micro-blogging 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 ...

, where one posts brief snippets to interested observers via

text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible compute ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

the 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 se ...

. Using the same tools, one can post to one's micro-blog and to one's sideblog simultaneously. Most sideblogs are actually embedded micro-blogs that appear in a small sidebar box next to the main blog posts and use feeds or plugins to display the content. Frequently updating one's status and frame of mind in an online platform to be viewed by friends gained widespread adoption through

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

tools like

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 M ...

and MySpace. While those tools are still largely desktop-bound, micro-blogs (and, by extension, sideblogs) are designed to be updated from mobile devices as well as desktop computers. Therefore, it is more convenient to post one's status with a simple text message, and interested parties can note your status by browsing your sideblog or receiving a text or

alert. This meaning came to change with the advent of

blogroll 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-r ...

s, blog engine plugins, and widgets and third-party lists of

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 ...

, like tag clouds and social bookmarks.

See also