What is a blog?
A blog is an online diary of sorts, it can be seen by anyone in the world and you can display your viewpoints and opinions on it.
The word blog came from the word “weblog” first used by John Berger in December 1997. The shortened, more popular version, “blog” was first coined by Peter Merholz in May 1999.
A blog post is an entry to the blog, like an entry into your journal. Though any post may become a discussion and anyone can read it. It can be a sort of two-way news, allowing the reader to ask questions, express their opinions and spam.
People can comment on your blog entries if they feel you might want to see their opinion or if they feel they need to express themselves as well. Blogs are about connecting with people and they do that by allowing posts from both the blogger and the reader, some blog sites like this one (though; not liking it so far) allow “friends” to add you; like a social networking site (Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, etc).
Another interesting aspect of a blog is that the potential audience is the entire world, whether you are writing a blog for a college course, like this one, or writing about games/consoles, anyone can read it and become interested.
Blogging has increased in popularity over the years due to the fact it can be done by anyone, not just professionals. You can write about any news you like with your opinion. Some people have even decided to deviate from news sites and focus on getting their news from blogs.
People can read many blogs at once using a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). This grabs the posts from the blog and displays them in a window for you to see (normally just the title). If the user sees something they want to read, they can click it and it will take them to the post.
What is my opinion on blogs?
I think blogs can be a very good source for information on anything. I have a few blogs I read daily, I’ve also owned quite a few blogs, one of which almost landed me in serious trouble with the law, proving that anyone can read them (although; the police use specific software to scan the internet for keywords and then read it [took them long enough]).
Blogs can also be a good way of expressing yourself, instead of owning a diary, you could own a blog and let other people read how you feel about life in general.
What are the advantages of having a blog?
The advantages are many, though I will list and explain a few here.
Blogs are easier to write than an actual written diary. Some people find it easier to type their thoughts and opinions than write them down; they have the option of going back and deleting it. They also might consider typing less effort.
Blogs are also a good way to communicate with others; people can post anything they like, be it extremely political such as exposing corruption, or something related to the blogger themselves, such as their day at work or college.
Blogging is affordable, there are plenty of blog sites that allow free accounts with full access to features (Blogger for one [owned by Google]) and is accessible by anyone to create or read the blogs on that site.
Blogging holds much potential for making someone famous because of the way they write, what they write about, who they write about, and much more. This is a different form of becoming famous than the way people are used to seeing. Famous bloggers aren’t normally known outside the internet and it doesn’t hold much in the way of fortune, but it does gain respect for you.
A blog post is an entry to the blog, like an entry into your journal. Though any post may become a discussion and as mentioned before; anyone can read it. It can be a way of two-way news, allowing the reader to ask questions, express their opinions and spam [seriously.]
The dangers and disadvantages of Blogging.
There are many dangers and disadvantages to blogging, many of which can be avoided, some however, cannot. I’ll explain a few below.
Internet trolls and Identity trolls (two very different things the latter is which Sue, our tutor, confused with an internet troll).
An internet troll is a person who posts controversial/irrelevant posts to anything with the intention of getting a reaction from people. They generally want to disrupt and disturb other users of that community.
An identity troll is different, they attempt to gain information about a certain person and post it to various places. This can lead to defamation of the person (another danger of blogging) and may affect future job opportunities and offers (Employers are using the internet a lot more to search their employees/potential employee’s names)
Negative propaganda on that person may be created/posted which can also lead to defamation.
The bloggers code of conduct
The bloggers code of conduct is a proposal made by Tim O’Reilly for bloggers to use when owning a blog and when posting to it. This is pasted below (taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/).
1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.
Finding other blogs
Finding other blogs is easy with the use of blog search engines. These are easy to use and a good example of a blog search engine is Technorati.com. They index over 112 million blogs and finding one related to your interests is easy.
