[edit] Brief Description

[edit] Wiki description

Description

A blog (also called weblog) software is a content management application specialized in articles publishing, most often displayed as online journals, where entries are displayed in a reverse chronological order. Bloggers (someone who keeps a blog) are usually people passionate about a certain domain and they provide news and commentaries in that field. The blogs are updated periodically, sometimes even daily.

Numbers and statistics

• Technorati (the biggest blogs directory and search engine) currently tracks 107,8 million blogs

• on Technorati there are over 175.000 new blogs every day

• users post on Technorati over 1.6 milion posts per day

• the Pew Internet & American Life Project estimated, in July 2006, that over 8% of US adult internet users writes at least a blog

• there are 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day

• Japanese is the first language used for blogging with 37%, english is second with 33% and chinese the third with 8%

• tags are used more and more every day, over 35% of all sites indexed by Technorati use them

History

1994 - 1995 - some students or young professionals (Justin Hall, Jerry Pournelle, John Carmach, Steve Gibson or Stephen Heaslip for example) started to write online journals

December, 17th 1997 - the term of "weblog" was first used by Jorn Barger

October 1998 - Open Diary launched

March 1999 - LiveJournal launched

August 1999 - Blogger.com was launched (and in February 2003 it was purchased by Google)

2001 - as blogging was gaining popularity, how-to tutorials started to appear, explaining especially the technical details and journalism schools began researching the phenomenon

2002 - many bloggers commented by US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader. This was the first notable confirmation of the blogs role in spinning news. Next, politicians started to write blogs and to use them as a news source

January 2005 - The Fortune magazine listed the most important 8 bloggers for business people

Features

Blog software features usually include:

• Posts creation (with title, date, author, body, permalink): since the main purpose of a blog is to post frequently new text and images, creating and editing posts should be easy and usable.
  

• Comments (with author, URL, comment): because blogs are a communication tool and the interaction between readers and the author is very important, comments are usually supported. Sometimes only registered users can post comments, but usually anonymous comments are accepted too.
  

• Categories and tags: categories allow the author to subdivide the content, just like putting posts about different subjects in different baskets, and help the user to read only about the subjects he's interested in. Tags are relevant keywords the author attributes to the posts. Usually there are more tags attributed to a post and one category.
  

• Links (organized in a blogroll): most blogs have a sidebar that include links to other blogs or relevant web pages. This links are organized in categories and all the categories of links are named blogroll.
  

• Feeds: Because there are millions of blogs, many users use news aggregators to subscribe to blogs, rather than visiting 150 blogs every day. Usually, blog applications generate RSS and Atom feeds.
  

• WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) HTML editor: for the ease of creating and editing posts, WYSIWYG editors offer the possibility of adding HTML formating without being necessary to write code.
  

• Moderation: spam comments are a problem on blogs and sometimes visitors post inappropriate comments too. For helping the blogger to weed out of the comments he doesn't want on his blog blog platforms offer different moderation options.
  

• new posts and comments notification: sometimes the visitors have the possibility to subscribe to receive notifications about new posts or about the new comments on posts.
  

• photo gallery: since there are many bloggers that are photographers, many blog applications offer the possibility of creating a photo gallery.
  

• skins and templates: for customization the look of the blog, developers created template systems for most of the applications. Usually, for creating a template / skin there are coding knowledges needed, but for the popular blog software there are tutorials available. Also, if the application has a big community of developers many templates or skins are available for download.
  

• search: most of the blogging platforms offer a standard search option.
  

• spam filtering: since there are more and more spam bots trying to submit spam comments on the blogs, some blog applications have spam filtering option, allowing the blogger, for example, to stop from automate publishing any comment that has more than one link included or that has some words included. Also, sometimes the spam filters use lists of email addresses or URLs that where marked as spammers before.
  

• trackbacks and pingbacks: this are used to notify the author and the visitors of a post about other posts about the same subject.
  

• plugins: usually the blog applications allows the community to add more functionalities through plugin systems.
  

• import/exportfeatures: it allows the blogger to add quickly posts, comments, links (for the blogroll) if he wants to change the blogging platform he's using.

Types of blogs

By media type:

• vlog (video blog)
• linklog (links blog)
• sketchblog (portofolio or sketches blog)
• photoblog (photos blog)
• tumblelog (short posts and mixed media types)
• artlog (art work log)

By subject:

• political
• fashion
• travel
• photography
• sports
• media
• technology etc.

By the legal status of the authors:

• private blogs
• corporate blogs (written for business purposes like marketing, branding or PR)

Top software

There are many alternatives when choosing a blog software: hosted or downloadable and depending on the features needed: open-source or commercial.

One of the most popular applications, that is used both by unexperienced users and more professional ones too, is Wordpress. One of the arguments that recommend Wordpress is the huge community that is using it and is developing plugins and themes. Another big advantage is that the main application is open-source and free to use as well as the most of the plugins developed by the community. Wordpress is available as a hosted solution for free too at Wordpress.com offered by Automattic Inc.

Movable Type, created by Six Apart, is one of the most popular blogging applications for experienced users or companies. It has almost any feature a user may want and it offers many customization options, but because of that, is not that simple to install and it requires some code tweaking too. Movable Type costs $69.95 for personal users and $199.95 for commercial ones (the prices include support and discount for future upgrades). For the uses that don't want a blogging software for installing it on their own server, Six Apart offers Typepad, a similar application as a hosted service.

Other popular blogging solutions are:

Blogger - hosted service that is offered for free by Google
LiveJournal - hosted service offerd for free
Expression Engine - downloadable commercial software offered by pMachine
TextPatters - open source downloadable software
MySpace - hosted service offerd for free
B2Evolution - open source downloadable software

How to choose

When choosing a blogging platform, you should first consider what's the main purpose of it:

• If you want a blog mainly to keep in touch with your friends and you don't want to spend money with it, probably the best solution for you is a free hosted application. Another strong argument for this choice is that you'll have many community features useful especially when you want to communicate with a small network of friends. Also, you won't need technical knowledges to set it up, all you have to do is to write your posts and enjoy blogging.

• If you work in IT, communication or online industry and having a blog is a must you may want to spend some money to invest in it. In this case an open-source or low-cost downloadable application might be the answer for you. You'll have a lot of features available through plugins which you can install for free and you'll be able to change the look of your blog. Of course, you'll need some technical knowledges to install the application on your server, to set it up it and to create a template if you need a custom one.

• If you need a corporate blog a custom application or a medium / high-cost one is probably the solution for you. You'll have all the features you need, quality support offered directly by the vendor and the blog will look exactly as you want. Also, you won't have security problems, but you have to know from the start that this solution will cost you, and for some choices in this area supplementary support or any other modification will extra-cost you too.

• If you want to make a statement that you are a real geek almost for sure a custom application is the answer. Even if you'll have to write it yourself, the community will appreciate you as a name in the industry.

Events

Blog World Expo - http://www.blogworldexpo.com
Web 2.0 Expo - http://web2expo.com
PodCamp Community UnConferences - http://podcamp.pbwiki.com
The BOBs - Best of the Blogs (Awards event) - http://www.thebobs.com
Blog Business Summit - http://blogbusinesssummit.com
Northern Voice Canada's Blogging Conference - http://northernvoice.ca
Australian Blogging Conference - http://www.freedomtodiffer.com/blogoz

Communities

Blogger Talk - http://www.bloggertalk.net
Australian Blogs Community @ BUMPzee - http://www.bumpzee.com/australian-blogs
Blogger Forum - http://www.bloggerforum.com
Bloggst - Community and resources for bloggers - http://bloggst.com
True Blogging Forum - http://www.trueblogging.com
Bloggeries (Directory, Forums, Reviews and Definitions) - http://www.bloggeries.com
BlogHer - The community for women who blog - http://www.blogher.org

See also

1. Description of blogs on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
   
2. Description of blog software on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_software
   
3. Blog software Breakdown (chart comparison of blog software) - http://asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm
   
4. Caslon Analytics about blogging - http://www.caslon.com.au/weblogprofile.htm
   
5. Blog Usage Statistics And Trends: Technorati State Of The Blogosphere - Q4 2006 - http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/04/06/blog_usage_statistics_and_trends.htm
   
6. Articles about blogs on about.com - http://weblogs.about.com/od/?once=true&