The term blog derives from web log, which is simply another word for an online journal. To visualize it better: WeBLOG. A blog or web log is a web site that is maintained by an individual with regular entries or posts that include commentary, thoughts and ideas, and may contain photos, graphics, audio, or video. A blog can be personal or business related. Business blogs can be used for internal communication or a public blog. Blogs can also be used for sales, marketing or PR purposes.
Types of blogs: Question Blog, Video Blog, Link Blogs, Spamming blogs together forming the blogosphere. While most blogs are created just for fun, some are supported by advertising. Most support by this advertising are popular, higher traffic blogs. All of these different blogs spread out over the entire globe had to create the opportunity for blog-specific search engines.
To understand how blogging became so influential today it is necessary to review its history. The earliest blogs were simply continuous updates of a standard HTML web site, a process that was difficult, and which required a certain level of technical knowledge to maintain the HTML code.Back in the mid 90s before the personal blog became as popular as it is today there were online communities such as Genie, BiX, EarthLink, and Prodigy, all of which were the earliest Internet Service Providers providing bulletin board systems and forums. Early bloggers called themselves “journalers”, but people weren’t just blogging about their personal lives and daily activities. In 2001, several popular political blogs emerged in the United States.
The year 2004 saw blogs becoming increasingly widespread. News services, political consultants and their candidates used blogs as outreach and opinion polls for their campaigns, and just to bond with their constituents.
I didn’t realize the political impact blogs could have until this last presidential campaign against McCain and Obama. These blogs were mainly targeting, as some bloggers saw, the ill-equipped vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. It was amazing how opinions and ideas could spread like wildfire. Palin aside, it seemed that news analysts, celebrities, young people were using blogs to create a voice, those blogs becoming public and displayed throughout the media. I learned that your blog can be a powerful as you want it to be. It can be a place to be heard or a personal journal to jot down daily thoughts, but the potential power that blogging has can’t be denied as seen through recent political tactics. When it comes to advertising and reaching out to your customers, blogging is the easiest way to communicate to them through social media. Ironic that we’re discussing blogging, while blogging!
Yes creating a blog and using facebook for this class were about the two easiest and most interactive things I could come up with so we could actually practice some of the things we're learning more about. Blogging is powerful -- some blogs have more influence than other longstanding mainstream media. Some people still may want to ignore their importance, but blogs I think will continue to grow in significance and reach. As a communicator it's important to consider how bloggers can help you share your message, and how you can use a blog to communicate directly (and free!) to your audiences.
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