Ever Heard the Word 'Blog'?

Ever heard the Word 'Blog'?

By Fariha Rashed
Weblogs or blogs are the recent trends and hip happenings on the virtual, intelligent world of the cybernet. Many of the regular internet users still confuse blogs with chat rooms, bulletin boards, and other web communication platforms. However, blogs are simply logs of interesting websites hosted by individuals who input information on massively diverse subjects. Furthermore, authoring a blog, sustaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts" or "entries". A person who posts these entries is called a "blogger".

It probably will be quite interesting to know that the initial weblogs were websites full of a mixture of different links, personal experiences, essays, jokes, recipes, gossip and so on, created by web enthusiasts, who knew how to formulate a website. In 1999, a whole community of blog readers sprang up, crowding the cyber world.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz. He broke the word weblog into the expression "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog in April or May of 1999. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal "blogging" in 1994 while a student at college, is generally accepted as one of the earliest bloggers. After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the arrival of the first hosted blog tools, round about the same time. In early 1999, Eatonweb Portal, comprising of a detailed list of weblogs was created by Brigeitte Eaton. Brig kept on compiling the rapid growth of blogs, until mid 1999, when the first free build- your-own-weblog tool, Pitas was launched. After Pitas the band wagon began, practically all and sundry having interest got opportunity to build there own weblog.

According to a Technrati report there were almost three million blogs up till mid 2004, which has been rapidly growing. Since blogs aren’t taken as a mainstream source of entertainment or job, bloggers i.e people who keep their own blog are considered as its best consumers. They equal to about 2.9 million based on Blog Count Report. Don’t get awed by it, it is only 4% of the online users who use blogs. These can be categorized in four main types.

Personal bloggers habitually create blogs with personal information, thoughts, experiences, and views etc. These blogs proved to be useful to those people whose interests match those of the personal bloggers. There are business bloggers who create blogs for the purpose of promoting their product or services. These blogs contain detail information which would other wise have reached you through brochures, or leaflets. Furthermore, there are organizational bloggers, who externally or internally communicate with people through blogs. Blogs related to NGO’s, community clubs, and institution details are an example of their creations. Lastly there are certain people who are actually paid to create blogs by other companies or clients. These are known as professional bloggers.

Having been around for a number of years blogs have now become a source of sharing and community building. Blogs such as BBC Urdu’s blog section, allow people to post their views, and opinions. It comes as a great surprise that many web experts like Sheila Coggins, consider blogs as a cross between bulletin boards and an ink list. Although most of the blogs are a complete waste of time, there are a number of them tilted towards specialized skills that are worth paying a visit. Journalists and weblogs also work hand in hand to help disseminate, filter and break news to the world. It has been discovered that weblogs can actually do an amazing job at breaking news and that journalists must harness that power by starting their own blogs. Also, a few rare bloggers transform into amateur journalists, a status which brings with it great ethical responsibility. However, most bloggers tend to be more like columnists rather than hard core journalists. The question and concern in the world of print media is whether bloggers have given birth to a new type of grassroots level journalism, one that threatens the extinction of journalism in its truest form. I personally feel that bloggers and journalists have a mutually beneficial relationship, just like symbiosis in Biology. They work together to report, filter and break news. In this way a blogging biosphere is created which can be thought of as an ecosystem. Bloggers have decided to describe this ecosystem as a blogosphere which is a living, breathing media biospehere of sorts.

I tried gathering info about the grounds on which people read blogs. The rationale that I found was honestly quite simple, and frankly, quite depressing. Out of 80 net users whom I interviewed, 65 didn’t know the difference between a blog and a website. “What difference does it make if I am using a website or a web blog, as long as I get what I want?” was the majority's reaction.

The basic difference between a website and a blog is rather technical. Blogs are usually updated on a regular basis with posts or entries with date and time stamps. Websites do not have to be updated that frequently until and unless it belongs to a media body like Al-Jazeera or BBC. Furthermore, blogs are generally text based, where as, websites might also have pictures, flash files, or sound waves. Furthermore, blogs have posts in a reverse-chronological order. Thus, the newest piece of information is what users are confronted with at the top of the page, when they visit a blog. For readers this gives them a sense of immediacy with no extra effort being done on their part. Also the reader does not have to browse the page to see what new stuff has been added or changed. Blog pages commonly appear uniform in layout and design because some are created using blog software which often uses a template technique for making each page. As a result, blogs typically don't suffer from the problems new users can have with formatting Web pages.

Amongst the respondents, those who did know about blogs or use them gave several reasons for using blogs. These included gathering information on various topics and issues, learning more about a particular topic, being entertained with humorous content or interesting reports, finding people with similar interests and concepts.

I managed to find two real life bloggers who had their blogs on really interesting issues.

Asad (27) made his blog about racing cars, because he could not find the required information. To his surprise he not only managed to get that information on his blog, but professional racers also started posting there. “Now we are a small community and discuss various racing and car issues. It really helps,” he confided.

Rehab (26) on the other hand actually gets paid for his blog making. “It all started when I made a weblog during summer vacations and posted it on the net for the sake of fun. My blog was about imaginary hair oil that would make hair grow. I was amazed at the response that I got. Initially, it was hilarious, but then I started taking it seriously and got hired by some company who wanted to build a website for advertising.” Rehab convinced them that a blog would be cheaper and as efficient. He was actually earning money, while performing a hobby.

The trend of blogging in Pakistan is increasing gradually. The motivation, being its self publishing, automated technology. One such application is “Blogger”, the web service, which allows you to launch your own blog inside the cyber world without any difficulty or time wastage. Many websites also provide their users some space to put their blogs online. On Blogger one can add a myriad of images to support one’s blogs and can paste various links also. A Blogroll is also present, which is a list of links to other blogs, often included in a vertical column down one side of the weblog: usually a way of identifying the blogs one reads or esteems. Blogger is held in liking by many longer-term bloggers, even though it fell out of fashion, as the service was run for some time by only one person - Evan Williams - after the dot.com crash. Blogger was subsequently bought by Google, the search engine, for an undisclosed sum.

Blogs are one of the easiest and inexpensive mechanisms of putting information on the internet. Without any hassles or stress, a blogger can make his ideas, opinions, and concepts available online. In easy words a blog, is like an electronic personal diary. Any thing a person feels like narrating to others can be presented to them, through the e–media. Blogs are also used as a source of commercial promotion or e-marketing. It is also a means of communication and interaction amongst a particular community with same interests. Although, there are only 4% of the net users, who put blogs to exercise, it is becoming a rapid trend. I myself had to use blogs in order to get all this information about them; hence, I would definitely be recommending their use. They can be quite handy!