What are Weblogs?

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The simplest definition of "weblog" is "a regularly-updated web site featuring articles arranged in reverse chronological order -- that is to say, the most recently-added article appearing first, followed by the second-most-recent one, and so on." As new articles are added to the page, older articles are "pushed" father down the page.

The word "blog" is a shortened form of the word "weblog".

(The first appearance of the word "blog" is said to have first appeared on the weblog Eatonweb in 1999, but its author says that blogger Peter Merholz coined the term. The term "weblog" is believed to have been coined in 1997 by blogger Jorn Barger.)

The weblog format has proven to be suitable for all kinds of uses:

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There are weblogs like Boing Boing, which point to interesting web pages and news items on the web. Metafilter has a similar purpose, but the "meat" of its entries are the comments on each article made by its readers.

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A number of weblogs are written by people who want to comment on current events: Lawrence Lessig talks about law and the internet; humorist Dave Barry uses his as an another outlet for his observational humor, Glen Reynolds and Tom Tomorrow talk about politics; Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls and Chris Pirillo talk about technology.

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A number of companies are -- either officially or unofficially -- using weblogs as a way of keeping in touch with their customers: companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Macromedia and Tucows use weblogs as a means of disseminating technical information about their products.

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Many weblogs are online diaries, such as those of Tony Pierce, Bluishorange, Loobylu or The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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There are "photoblogs" by people like Rannie "Photojunkie" Turingan and Heather Champ.

Since weblogs are essentially web pages, it is possible to create them "by hand"; that is, using nothing but a text editor to type in the HTML yourself. This is a tedious process that even the most experienced webmaster would rather avoid. Luckily, weblogging tools like Blogware simplify the process of managing a weblog. Blogware helps manage the ordering, organization and archiving of articles so that you can concentrate on what's important in a weblog: the content.


Last updated 6/12/2004