Blog
A
blog (a truncation of the expression
weblog)
[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the
World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual[
citation needed], occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from
newspapers, other media outlets,
universities,
think tanks,
advocacy groups and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of
Twitter and other "
microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal newstreams.
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. (Previously, a knowledge of such technologies as
HTMLand
FTP had been required to publish content on the Web.)
A majority are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via
GUI widgets on the blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
[2] In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of
social networking service. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs, but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers.
[3] There are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments, such as
Daring Fireball.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject; others function as more personal
online diaries; others function more as
online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs,
Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (
art blogs), photographs (
photoblogs), videos (
video blogs or "vlogs"), music (
MP3 blogs), and audio (
podcasts).
Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources. These blogs are referred to as
edublogs.
On 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.
[4] On 20 February 2014, there were around 172 million
Tumblr[5] and 75.8 million
WordPress[6] blogs in existence worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers,
Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today, however Blogger does not offer public
statistics.
[7][8] Technorati has 1.3 million blogs as of February 22, 2014
[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog