Weekly Question

Just what is a Blog?

There are according to Technorati over 52 million, yes that is 52 million blogs worldwide at the moment, and that number is only the number of blogs that are tracked by one tracking service there maybe a lot more.
As Radio 5Live are celebrating "International Blog Day" today, I thought I would ask the question, just what is a Blog? Now this could take some time, to answer but hopefully you will bear with me, and enter your comments and even your links for your own Blogs.

As I have said BBC Radio 5Live are celebrating International Blog Day, where by they would like everyone with a Blog to link to 5 other blogs, that are very different and diverse from their own, also from different countries and cultures ( more info here 5Live ). So I have started off by adding a couple of links, and will add 3 more later today.

Nicky Cambell & Shelagh Fogarty

Radio 5Live are also asking for people to recommend their blogs so that 5Live website can link to them.

But what is a Blog?

Well according to Wikipedia the definition of a blog is as follows;

A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a type of website where entries are made (such as in a Personal journal or diary displayed in a reverse Chronological order.
Blogs often provide commentary or news and information on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal Online diary. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs, videos, or audio podcasting.
The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. For a full account check here Wikipedia

OK, so now you have an Idea of where the word blog came from and what the Blog started up as, but nowadays a Blog is far more than that. A Blog is a huge source of information, information that can be accessed (and this is important) for FREE. It is a good thing for us everyday users who want to garnish some information about things we are interested in, but not so good for specialised websites that charge for that info.
So a lot of you are now bothered about reading about one persons life with their kids, and their job from 9 to 5, but just may be that person will have something in their blog that is of interest to you, it just may take a casual glance at the page, you move away to surf something else, but then something in your head registers and you hit the Back button to read some more. Reading more of the Blog you initially had no interest in means you discover a remedy to the back problem that has been bugging you for years. Then hopefully this blog has some advertising on and you see a related advert, click on it and you get just what you want.

Some people only use Blogs as they were originally intended, but big companies are now seeing the potential for Blogging, or using Blogs as an advertising medium. This leads us on to the other beauty of a Blog, it can be a little money earner for the Blogger in question. I am not talking thousands of pounds here, but a nice bit of pocket money. How is it done? Well it depends on the Blog Host, I myself use Google Adsense.

Google Adsense, puts on your Blog adverts that depend on the content of the Blog, so on this page you may see quite a few Blogging ads, and you may see one for 5Live. But as I have mentioned back pain, you may even see one for back problems. Whenever anyone but you clicks on an Ad, you get a certain amount of money. It may only be a couple of cents, but if you get enough people interested in your Blog, you will be looking at over a dollar a click. Get friends and family involved, and they could click on 5 Ads a day, upping your income quite nicely. The advertisers who have their Ads on Google, pay a nominal fee, and then only pay for each click they receive, which means an incredibly cheap way to advertise.

But Blogging isn't about making money is it? It is about sharing information, and the best way to do that is whilst on a Blog site, search for something like film blog, or DVD blog, or Pony Blog, even Dinosaur Blog, and you will have tons of Blogs to look at and a wealth of information.

Blogs are going to be an integral part of the future, they are going to allow our children help with their school projects, allow us to learn new skills, give us information we can't find anywhere else, but most of all make our lives better.

Now there is only one downside, that the system isn't foolproof at the moment, and there are still a few sites that have questionable content, but they are getting fewer.

There are over 52 million Blogs out there, and they are growing in number daily, if someone was given the task to read every blog, they would probably never finish. Blogs are great, Blogs are here to stay. So in answer to the question Just What is a Blog?

It's everything!