A brief introduction to blogging…
Blog — (weB LOG)
A blog is basically a journal that is available on the Web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.
Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently.
Blogs are a new (or at least newer) and extremely powerful means of viral communication. Blogs are an individualist communication tool that, depending on the author can be highly intelligent thoughts or as mundane as what the author had for lunch that day. This is what makes blogs so great. An author can write about how they had a cheese sandwich for lunch and within 10 minutes several people could respond saying they had cheese sandwiches for lunch as well. This example may seem trivial but its the concept that is powerful. If something as simple as a cheese sandwich can link people together, imagine the possibilities of opinions, new products, new ideas, and more.
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/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc. — Dave Winer
Blogging as a concept has been around for as long as the Internet, but has exploded in the past 6-8 months. Blogs are fast, simple, streamlined web pages that funnel ones thoughts and work to the web as quickly as one can type. They allow information, and more importantly, opinions, to travel at ultra high-speed. The beauty behind blogging is that anyone can do it. Movie buffs have equal weight with their reviews as Roger Ebert. In fact, because bloggers are typically individuals, the honesty of their opinions is more significant, making their readers more inclined to trust their opinions.
Blogosphere: The chaotic, disorganized, decentralized universe of diary-style Web pages (blogs).
Blogging creates communities of like minded people all over the internet. In effect this makes news, information, and opinions travel very fast. There is no such thing as mass media in the Blogging world so people listen even more carefully to their peers. If three people in your Blogosphere enjoy a particular movie there will be a good chance that you will enjoy it as well since you are all of like mind. When one becomes involved in a Blogging community, they begin to trust and seek advice or opinions from the fellow
Marketers often hear the words viral marketing or the ultimate form of Word Of Mouth and want to immediately put the Blogosphere to work. The problem with this is that the content has to be perfectly designed. It has to be incredibly interesting for one blogger to talk about, even more so to get a huge number of bloggers talking about it.
About a year ago Dr. Pepper paid several Blogging Gurus (the celebs of the Blogosphere) to promote their new product Raging Cow, a flavored milk. Unfortunately, their approach was highly criticized by the Blogging community. Their ad agency (the Richards Group in Dallas) tried to hide the influences of the corporation on the bloggers they selected. This approach directly conflicted with the core nature of blogging: honesty. People want hear from people they can trust and connect with, not some big cold company .
But like all viral concepts, if the content is right, the corporate influences become nearly irrelevant. In 2003, LEGOLAND California created a contest as part of their efforts to find the next model builder for the park. Bloggers have had no hesitation in talking about this.
Blogs, bloggers, and the Blogosphere is an amazing phenomenon that shows no signs of slowing. As political candidates, major media outlets, government officials, and professional journalists, and of course many many individuals all start to setup their own blogs, we are seeing another significant shift in the way people connect to each other.
