I was sitting in my local Internet Cafe yesterday, I like to
get away from my "home office" from time to time and it's a
great place to go for a cup of Espresso and to meet
interesting people. The rather attractive lady sitting next
to me was typing away furiously and, when she had finished,
I asked her what she was writing - I'm interested in
learning how other people use the Internet... some people
call that being nosey!
It turns out she was a "Blogger" and she was updating her
web site through a web browser. She was really interested in
vegetarian cookery and she was adding a new restaurant
review to her blog.
If you spend any time at all online these days you simply
can't avoid reading something about blogs, they are becoming
increasingly more popular; and they are a great way of
building an online presence without the need for any
technical knowledge. A blog is an abbreviation of the term
'web log' which is a relatively simple content management
system.
Quite a few years ago, web surfers began collecting
information and interesting links that they encountered
during their online travels. As time passed they started to
create logs of the information that they collected and they
soon started to develop their own web logs. These web logs
enabled them to update the information and links as often as
they wished.
Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online forum or to
a discussion list, they are much more dynamic than the
traditional style home pages. They are also more personal
than standard journaling, and definitely more public than
diaries. A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a
person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of
hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of
blogs as there are people.
There are a few common characteristics of a blog, but there
may be slight variations within the classification. Some
blogs provide succinct descriptions of links within the
chosen theme of the blog. Some others contain commentary and
links to the news of the day. A few are endless stream of
blurts about the writer’s day. Others are - political blogs,
intellectual blogs, some are hilarious and some topic
driven. They are all - Weblogs.
As mentioned earlier, blogs are posts that are short,
informal and sometimes deeply personal no matter what the
topic of discussion is. They can be characterized by their
conversational tone.
If a person has a web presence but is disappointed with
static homepage - if an elegant treatment of posts on a
global platform is what they want, then ‘blogging’ provides
an ideal platform. They may also consider blogging if they
are seeking feedback from their chosen audience.
Weblogs are definitely the mavericks of the online world.
Two of their greatest strengths are their ability to filter
and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience,
and their position outside the mainstream of mass media.
There are many different options available to the new and
seasoned blogger alike. Some blog scripts are available for
you to install on your own domain and these require at least
a basic understanding of FTP and HTML. There are many hosted
blog services available some free and some paid. If you are
serious about blogging then I would strongly recommend that
you use the best system that you can afford and that meets
your needs.
I personally have used the "Moveable Type" stand-alone
script and although quite complex to install, I found it
very easy to use. My recommended choice of hosted blogging
service would have to be the
About the Author
John Taylor is a prolific writer, he is the author of several
Internet Marketing related eBooks, including "Testing