blog (redirected from Web logs)

blog, short for web log, an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. Blogs typically report and comment on topics of interest to the author, and are usually written and posted using software specifically designed to facilitate blogging; they include hyperlinks to other website and, often, photos, video clips, and the like. The most recent entry by the blogger is posted at the beginning of the blog, with earlier entries following in reverse chronological order; comments and other responses to the blog by readers are often posted after each entry.

Although some bloggers have (or have achieved) prominence and expertise that makes them as influential in politics and other areas as established journalists, reviewers, and critics (some of which maintain blogs themselves), many bloggers reach relatively few readers and discuss matters of largely personal interest. Blogs are also used by politicians, businesses, and others to keep voters, customers, and the like informed on matters of common interest; they can function as a significant alternative to television, newspapers, and other mainstream media, especially in nations where the media are controlled or censored by the government. Bloggers have at times broken important news stories or marshalled public opinion on a matter of public interest.

Online journals first appeared in the early 1990s. The development in the late 1990s of software that made updating an online journal easier and the subsequent rise of websites that specialized in hosting blogs spurred the rapid growth of blogging in the first years of the 21st cent., and by the mid-2000s there were millions of blogs on the Internet.

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(1) To write a blog entry. Blogs (definition #2 below) became so popular that the noun was turned into a verb; for example, "I'll blog about that subject next month."

(2) (WeBLOG) A Web site that contains dated text entries in reverse chronological order (most recent first) about a particular topic. Blogs serve many purposes from online newsletters to personal journals to "ranting and raving." They can be written by one person or a group of contributors. Entries contain commentary and links to other Web sites, and images as well as a search facility may be included. Blogs may also contain video (see vlog).

Although some blogs invite feedback and comments, Internet newsgroup discussions, which started long before the Web, tend to be more question-and-answer oriented (see newsgroup). See also cyberjournal.

Software and Services
The first blogs were manual entries in the late 1990s, typically just a part of a Web site and updated by coding in HTML. They took off in 1999, when blog development applications such as Pitas, Blogger and GrokSoup were released. The template-based software made it easy to create a blog on a Web server and add entries without having to know any HTML. Blog hosting services came along and offered the same functionality on their own servers, allowing anyone to maintain a blog on the Web.

The News Feed
Many blog sites offer an RSS or Atom syndication feed that provides headlines of their latest entries along with URLs to the content (see syndication feed).

The Blogosphere
After 9/11, blogs were used to convey information, thoughts and feelings faster than any previous method. On controversial issues as well as mainstream subjects, blogs can quickly reach people around the world. The "blogosphere," which is the world of blogs, has become such a forum for public expression that it is being routinely searched for reactions and opinions about products, politics and issues of all kinds.

Everybody's Talking
Exploding like Web sites in the late 1990s, the amount of information on blogs is mind numbing. In 2007, there were more than 100 million blogs, and sites such as Technorati (www.technorati.com) and Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com) were created to help users wade through them. See blog network, blog ping, crawler, blogrolling, blognosing, blogorrhea, blogger, War blog and dooced.

Geek Humor

From "The Best of The Joy of Tech" cartoon book by Nitrozac and Snaggy (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 2003, ISBN 0-596-00578-4). (Image courtesy of GeekCulture, www.geekculture.com)

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blog - weblog