1. Welcome to the Blogosphere

Objective: To understand what blogs are and how they work.

Want to voice your opinions for all the world to see? Then start a blog. Want to keep a personal diary online? Then start a blog. Want to share pictures and videos with friends and family? Then start a blog. Want to make some spare cash talking about stuff you like to talk about? Then start a blog.

Blogs are wonderful things, a combination of diary and website, posted on the Internet for anyone and everyone to read. Big-name celebrities have blogs, as do journalists and professional commentators, as do average everyday folks like you and me. Anyone can create a blog; it’s really quite easy and costs you little to nothing in terms of financial expense. All you need is the time to do it and some sort of blog publishing tool—such as Google’s Blogger.

What Blogs Are—and How They Work

Okay, so you’ve heard about these “blog” things. But just what is a blog—and why should you care?

Understanding Blogs

First off, a blog—short for “web log”—is a personal journal that is hosted on the Web. Most blogs are updated frequently with commentary, links to other sites, and anything else the author might be interested in. Many blogs also let visitors post comments in response to the owner’s postings, resulting in a community that is very similar to that of a message board. It’s a twenty-first century version of self-publishing, enabled by the Internet.

Blogs can contain text comments, photos, videos, music, and links to other blogs and web pages. A blog can be hosted by a single person or by a collaborative group; an individual or group can run any number of blogs.

Bloggers typically update their blogs on a regular basis—weekly, daily, or even hourly, depending on the blogger. The process of updating a blog is facilitated by blog publishing software, such as Blogger and WordPress. Hosting a blog requires little or no technical expertise on the part of the blogger.

Understanding Bloggers

Blogging, if you’re serious about it, can be quite time consuming. Even if it only takes you 5 or 10 minutes to write and post a blog entry, the time starts to add up after awhile. Knowing this, how do so many bloggers find time for all these postings—and why?

For what it’s worth, there isn’t a simple answer to that question.

You see, some people view their blogs as a kind of personal-yet-public scrap-book—an online diary to record their thoughts for posterity. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it’s still valuable to the author as a repository of thoughts and information they can turn to at any later date.

But that isn’t always the case. Although some blogs are completely free-form, many other blogs have some sort of focus; there are blogs devoted to hobbies, to sports teams, to local events, to particular industries, and so on. Bloggers write about music or video games or travel or cooking or whatever they’re interested in; their blogs include their thoughts on the topic at hand, as well as links to interesting news articles and websites.

Then there are those people who blog for a cause, political or otherwise. Liberal blogs link to left-leaning stories and pages; conservative blogs contain commentary and links that reinforce their right-leaning viewpoints. There are blogs for every point on the political spectrum, and some you’ve never thought of. In fact, many people get their first exposure to the blogosphere via the network of left-wing and right-wing blogs—especially during an election year!

In a way, the most serious bloggers are like columnists in the traditional media. They write with a passion, a point of view, and a personal sensibility that makes their blogs extremely interesting to read. Even bloggers who don’t inject personal comments still offer a viewpoint based on what they choose to include and link to in their blogs. It’s an interesting world out there in the blogosphere, and it’s revolutionizing journalism (and journals) for the new online reality.

To that end, many bloggers consider themselves journalists, of a sort. Blogging isn’t mainstream media, by any definition of the phrase, but many bloggers report and comment on the major topics of the day. In fact, many top stories in recent years—particularly in the political arena—have been broken by bloggers. U.S. President Obama has even taken to including a handful of top bloggers in his press conferences.

Browsing the Blogosphere

When you take all the blogs on the Web together, you get something called the blogosphere. It’s important to think of the blogosphere as both part of and separate from the Web, because of all the interlinking going on. Look at any blog, and you’re likely to see a list of related blogs (sometimes titled “friends of...”). Bloggers like to link to other blogs that they like, as well as to news stories, photos, audio files—you name it.

There are many different types of blogs in the blogosphere. Blogs can be defined by their content, as well as by how their content is delivered or created.

Personal Blogs

The most common types of blogs are personal blogs. A personal blog is nothing more than a running series of comments, in diary-like format, by an individual. Personal blogs are a way to let friends and family know what you’re doing, or to express your opinions and comments on life in general or on specific events.

Personal blogs typically contain short text posts, like the entries in a personal diary. They can also contain personal photographs, artwork, home movies, and the like.

Official Blogs

Many companies and organizations, large and small, maintain their own official blogs. These blogs can be external (targeted to and accessible by the general public) or internal (targeted to and accessible by employees only).

External company blogs are often used for public relations purposes, as part of a company’s online marketing efforts. Internal company blogs are typically used to communicate in-house policies and procedures to the company’s employees.

Group Blogs

A group blog is one run by a club, society, or other group. These blogs are typically used to inform group members and other interested parties of current and upcoming group activities.

Topic Blogs

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as politics, movies, fashion, and the like. These blogs post news, reviews, and commentary about the topic at hand.

Media Content Blogs

Blogs can also be defined by the type of media contained within. The most common types of content blogs include the following:

• Photoblog, containing primarily digital photos

• Vlog, containing primarily digital videos and movies

• Linklog, containing primarily links to other blogs and websites

• Sketchblog, containing primarily art sketches

Device Blogs

Finally, blogs can be defined by the type of device used to create the blog posts. The most common type of device blog is the moblog (mobile blog), with posts created on a smartphone or other mobile device.

Creating Your Own Blog with Google Blogger

Given the proliferation of blogs today—more than 100 million, by most counts—it should come as no surprise that anyone can create a blog. It’s really quite easy, and can be quite fun.

If you want to create your own blog, you have two ways to go. You can use blogging software to create a blog on your own website, using your own web-hosting service. Alternatively, you can create a blog at one of the many blog-hosting services.

A blog-hosting service is a site that offers easy-to-use tools to build and maintain your blog and then does all the hosting for you—typically for free. Creating your own blog on one of these sites is as simple as clicking a few buttons and filling out a few forms. After your blog is created, you can update it as frequently as you like, again by clicking a link or two.

Perhaps the most popular blog-hosting community on the Web today is Blogger (www.blogger.com), which was one of the first sites on the Web to offer free blog creation and hosting. Launched in 1999 as a freestanding service, Blogger was purchased by Google in 2003 and is now part of the Google family of websites. Blogger is host to more than 8 million individual blogs, more than any other blog-hosting service.

Anyone can sign up to Blogger, for free, and within minutes create their first blog. Blogger can host your blog (also for free) if you want, or you can host your blog on your own website. It’s all quite simple—and easy enough for anyone to do it.