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Weblogs in a nutshell
What are weblogs?
In my opinion, weblogs are both a format and a web publishing tool.
The weblog format has the following components:
- Made up of multiple distinct entries/posts
- Usually multiple entries appear on the front page, with older entries archived by date
- Entries appear in reverse chronological order, with the newest entries at the top
- Each entry has a unique URL (permalink)
Weblog content
People can and do put just about anything in the weblog format.
- In my totally unscientific observation-based opinion, probably the most common type of blog is personal diary.
LiveJournal in particular has a reputation as a haven for gossipy teenagers (and their member statistics may bear that out). Spirit and OpportunityGrrl are good examples of this style that I can share without violating anybody's personal privacy. (These journals are ostensibly written by NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers)
Similarly, because blogging is such an easy web-publishing tool, I know people who use weblogs to track such things as their daily diet and exercise, for example.
- A second major category of weblogs are politics/activism/current events (I tend to call these newsblogs for short). They report on the news. These are the blogs that frequently make the news (by breaking stories) and tend to dominate weblog popularity rankings. [Blog popularity tends to be measured in two ways: number of visits/hits, and number of other sites that link to them.]
- There are also subject-specific blogs. For example, The Leaky Cauldron acts as a central site for information on the Harry Potter series. SCOTUSblog covers the U.S. Supreme Court. By putting the latest news on the top of the page, weblogs are an excellent way to stay current.
LibDex maintains a list of library weblogs, and I would guess that most academic disciplines are being blogged, group-blogs about the field and/or blogs by individual practitioners. For example, here are blogs dedicated to law and economics.
- There are also corporate blogs. Some businesses and organizations use weblogging software for their websites or intranets, particularly pages that may need frequent updates with top news. Unless you look closely, you might not necessarily think of these as weblogs, but that's what they are:
- Companies also sometimes use external weblogs as a way to disseminate information to customers and the world at large. I recently discovered Panlibus by Talis.
People keep finding new and creative ways to use blogs.
- Besides using a blog to store writings, there are also art blogs and photo blogs and audioblogs.
- Several years ago, somebody started publishing The Diary of Samuel Pepys as a weblog, updating it daily to match the original 17th century date and adding annotations and other educational resources.
- A dozen bloggers collaborated on a central blog of the ALA Midwinter meeting, and it was so successful that expect to see more conference blogging in the future.
- And people get silly about blogging. There are blogs by fictional and historical characters (SpiritRover was the first of about two-dozen space probes that now blog), and countless parodies, such as the dullest blog in the world.
If you want to get a feel for the variety, Weblogs.com is a automated list of weblogs updated in the past hour. The World as a Blog shows similar data mapped against the globe, which is eerily hypnotic to watch.
In 2003, Tim Jarrett of Weblogs.com estimated people may be creating as many as 2.8 new weblogs per day. And that was two years ago.
Wanna try?
If you host your own domain and are familiar with programming, the sky's the limit as far as weblogging tools.
However, several companies will allow you to create a weblog and host it on their server, so you need to nothing but come up with a title and write posts. Since they cost nothing to use but a little time, these are probably good starting points:
- TypePad, based on Movable Type is a fee service, but offers a 30-day free trial, if you wish to explore their tools. I do not use MT, but get the impression it is much more technically sophisticated and feature-rich than Blogger, but also more complicated.
- LiveJournal has a very friendly feel. It fosters communities and makes it easy to build social networks with other LJ users.
Why blogging is big news
Much of the media coverage on blogs has emphasized the political blogs, particularly during the election season. Bloggers have played a role in Howard Dean's fundraising, Trent Lott's resignation, and the Sixty Minutes documents, among other events. So that's one area where blogging has made the news.
But the other big story, which helps explain our company's interest in the subject, is just the sheer numbers:
Hype
In January, Pew Research released a report on blogging. Among the findings from their surveys:
- 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.
- 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February.
- 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. That represents more than 14 million people
32 million blog readers sounds incredibly impressive, especially if one thinks of in terms of potential customers, but the reality falls far short of that.
And some clarifications
My grandparents have bookmarked my weblog and read it regularly. By Pew's definition, they're blog readers. But as far as they're concerned, they're merely keeping in touch with their granddaughter. And that's true with a lot of blog readers, which is why the potential market is so much smaller.
Last year, Perseus Research conducted their own study on weblogs, looking primarily at hosted blogs. Although I've seen some criticisms of their methodology, they found that: "66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months. [...] Apparently the blog-hosting services have made it so easy to create a blog that many tire-kickers feel no commitment to continuing the blog they initiate." Of these, about half were "one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days."
And, keep in mind what I said above how most blogs are personal diaries. There may be a lot of blogs, but most of them won't be what we want or need.
Weblogs and our company: how they intersect
Human resources
Enough people have lost their jobs due to their personal weblogs, that there's actually a slang term for the practice: dooce or dooced. In many cases, the bloggers were stupid or careless, such as posting unflattering information about their employer.
The steps that I personally take to minimize such risks are probably irrelevant to this kind of general discussion of weblogs.
However, HR currently has no policy on employee weblogs. IMO, written guidelines can help both the company and blogging-employees know where the boundaries are, and thus prevent unpleasant surprises on either side.
If anyone wants more information on this issue, just ask. I do think this is a very important matter to consider, but (unless there's overwhelming popular demand for me to post it publically) I don't think this belongs in a general introduction to blogging.
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