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December 22, 2006

Weblog Defined

Weblogs or blogs have become so ubiquitous that many people use the term synonymous for “personal web site” (Blood, 2004). Unlike traditional Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) web pages, blogs offer the ability for the non-programmer to communicate on a regular basis. Traditional HTML style pages required knowledge of style, coding, and design in order to publish content that was basically read only from the consumer’s point of view. Weblogs remove much of the constraints by providing a standard user interface that does not require customization. Weblogs originally emerged as a repository for linking but soon evolved to the ability to publish content and allow readers to become content providers. The essence of a blog can be defined by the format which includes small chunks of content referred to as posts, date stamped, reverse chronological order, and content expanded to include links, text and images (Baoill, 2004). The biggest advancement made with Weblogs is the permanence of the content which has a unique Universal Resource Locator (URL). This allows the content to be posted and along with the comments to define a permanent record of information. This is critical in that having a collaborative record that can be indexed by search engines will increase the utility and spread the information to a larger audience. With the advent of software like Wordpress and Typepad, along with blog service companies like blogger.com, the weblog is fast becoming the communication medium of the new web.

One point to make is that while Weblog entries may have a low impact, the existence of an industry Weblog will have a huge impact.

Posted by Todd at December 22, 2006 4:39 PM