A blog (a portmanteau
of the term web log)[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, 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,
interest 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 HTML and 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. 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 13
October 2012, there were around 77 million Tumblr[5] and
56.6 million WordPress[6] blogs
in existence worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers, Blogger is the most popular blogging service used
today.[7][8]
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