What is a blog? Technically speaking, a blog is the name for a web log. Take the “b” off of web, add it to “log, and there you have it “blog”.
To blog, is easy. If you’ve ever written in a diary or journal, you’ve been “blogging”, without a “blog”. I “blogged” in a spiral notebook for a month before I had my first official blog. I’ve also “blogged”, using my Windows “Word” program.
“To blog”, means you’re putting your thoughts, opinions, and observations about life, or whatever, online. Once you “publish” your blog, it’s out there, for the whole world to see, (and critique).
You can have a private blog-one which requires a password to read, however, most blogs are public. You’ll find blogs of all kinds…corporate, political, sports, media, photography,fashion, educational, video….the list goes on.
Some blogs are filled with thousands of words of information. Others blog have a few sentences and may tell you to “click on a link” that follows. Some blogs are very specific, others aren’t. Some blogs have photos, some have videos. Part of the fun of finding someone’s blog, is navigating through the pages to see what they’re saying about “whatever”. If you agree, or don’t agree, with the author, you can oftentimes leave them a comment, and give them your opinion.
Some people set up a blog in hopes of making a kazillion dollars by using ads. Others,write valuable information on a given subject they want to share with the world, and may, or may not sprinkle a few ads throughout their site. Some blogs are meant to be “ad” blogs, and will be links to shopping websites.
Some people have one blog, but it’s not uncommon for individuals to have dozens of blogs. According to statistics, there are currently over 70 million blogs. I currently have two blogs, this one, and one that’s named Observationmountain.com On my other blog, I share my opinions and observations about life issues including diet and health, money saving tips, how to…, product reviews, favorite shopping sites, plus much more.
In this world of blogs, there’s not a right or wrong way of presenting a blog. It’s all about choice, and what works for the blogger.
So….can you have a blog? Absolutely!
Note: To read an interesting article with more information about blogs, including the history of blogs, go to Wikipedia.org
To be honest, I’m not really sure why I blog.
I kinow it started off as a way of letting a group of friends know about interesting things I’d found on the internet, information about free software and snippets of anything else I thought they would read.
In truth, I’m pretty sure none of them actually read it – in fact, some of them don’t even know what a blog is, and will look at me uncomfortably when I mention RSS – and it’s been around for a few months now. But others seem to enjoy reading it.