THE PHENOMENON CALLED BLOG

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………

2. CHAPTER I: Introducing the Concept of ‘Blog’ ……………………

I.1. Introducing the Concept of ‘Blog’ ……………………………
I.2. From Early Times to Present Day Blogs
…………………….
I.2.1. Amateur Radio …………………………………………..
I.2.2. Bulletin Board Systems ………………………………
I.2.3. Personal WebPages …………………………………….
I.2.4. The Birth of Blogging ………………………………….
I.2.5. Have you heard of ‘Blogger’? ……………………….
I.3. Steps in Creating Your Own Blog
………………………………
I.4. ‘Classification’ of Blogs ………………………………………….

3. CHAPTER II: Pragmatics- Great Communication Challenge

……………………………………………………………………………….
II.1. Pragmatics- Great Communication Challenge ……..
II.2. Pragmatics- Intentions in Communication ……………..
II.2.1. First Communicative Intentions ………………….
II.2.2. Second Communicative Intentions ………………
II.3. Intentions in Political Communication Blogs ……………
II.4. Be careful what you say! ……………………………………….

4. CHAPTER III: Why Blog? ………………………………………………….

 III.1. Why
Blog? .................................................................
III.2. Advantges and Disadvantages of a Blog over a
Website
………………………………………………………………………………..
III.3. Tips For A Better Weblog………………………………………

5. Glossary of Terms Related to Blogs

………………………………………
6. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………
Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of blog

from early times to present day. From the age of Pliny the Young, to
the use of diaries and ending with blogs, people kept events in their
life in a certain order.
The disposal of this paper is in three main chapters, some of
them having subchapters of their own.
The first chapter of the present paper deals with the concept of
blog, definitions given along time and the rapid development which
blogging undertook. In the history part, we have a representation of
the predecessors of modern blogging from amateur radio and Bulletin
Board Systems to the dawn of the first true blogs. Although it was
quiet difficult to classify, as there were no specific criteria, I’ve tried to
present in general the types of blogs one can come into contact with.
Whether personal or corporate, blogs follow almost thje same pattern,
and the author’s intentions are to produce some response from the
the reader. The reader relies on linguistic and extralinguistic
information in order to understand the message.
 The second chapter is about the close link between Pragmatics,
the intentions of communication and Blogs. It doesn’t matter whether
we are authors or readers of a blog, we all encounter difficulties when
we need to transmit or understand a message. Even if we talk
different languages, but both the writer and the reader use the same
code a communication can be established. The desire is totally
different from what is intended. For example one can desire to write a
blog, which will become well known and popular, but cannot intend to
do it unless he is an already well known person, his message is of high
interests and he benefits of publicity on most popular sites. The
promise of the web was that everyone could publish, that a thousand
voices could flourish, communicate, and connect. The truth was that
only those people who knew how to code a web page could make their
voices heard.
The third chapter of the present paper focuses on the question:
‘Why blog?’ and it is of a very personal approach. I have also pointed
the advantages and disadvantages that we can encounter if we want
to create a blog. It is an attempt to convince people to take part in the
world of the Internet which according to Dr. Weinberger in ‘World of
Ends’ nobody owns, everybody can use, and anybody can improve.
You can also meet some very interesting tips that can help you built a
successful blog.
I have finished my paper with a Glossary of terms related to
blog, in order to make clear if one should have troubles in
understanding phrases along the paper.
I hope we’ll find it easy to read and captivating.
CHAPTER I
 INTRODUCING THE CONCEPT OF ‘BLOG’

CHAPTER I

I.1. Introducing the Concept of ‘Blog’:

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the definitions, the origin
and not least the history of the word ‘blog’. In order to establish a
certain definition of the word and to discover its origins we have to
follow the timeline since 1992 –when Tim Berners-Lee created ‘What’s
new page’, then 1996- when the term ‘weblog’ was coined by John
Barger, 1999- when Pyra Lab’s created the free web application
‘Blogger’, owned today by Google and 2003- when the Oxford English
Dictionary included the term ‘weblog’, ‘weblogging’ and ‘weblogger’ in
it. The term "blog" is a truncated blend of the words "web" and "log."
It's a noun, but it can be used as a verb, to maintain or add content to
a blog.
 Blog is in original a part of the word ‘weblog’ and is defined by
the Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English as ‘an online
diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web
page’.
Acording to Mal Keenan, the term “web log” ‘was initially coined
refer to a server’s log file and then expanded to include the meaning
of online personal journaling.’ To avoid confusion, the word “blog”
‘was adopted to refer to personal journaling.’ Nowadays a blog is
defined as ‘an online publication where an author puts his or her
personal thoughts and opinions from the most intimate to corporate
ideas, concerns or events, in chronological order on the net’. (Mal
Keenan, 2005, ‘A Basic Introduction to Blogging
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/articles/ Introduction-to-
Blogging.htm)
‘A blog is a publication of personal thoughts, experiences, and
web links. It is updated frequently and is usually a mixture of what is
happening in a person's life and what is happening on the web or in
the media.’ (www.simplehostfinder.com/glossary.html)
‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and
Web links.’(keywordmktg.com/Glossary.aspx)
‘The word blog is derived from the combination of the two
words, web and log. Blogs are virtual diaries created by individuals
and stored on the Internet. Blogs generally consist of text and images
and can appear in a calendar type format.’
(www.netalert.net.au/03003-Glossary.asp)
‘A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually
maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary,
descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog"
can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a
blog’. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#Community_and_cataloging)
‘Web log is a journal kept on the Internet. This journal is often
updated daily and contains the information that the person
maintaining the blog (the blogger) wishes to share with the world.’
(www.avatar.co.nz/resources/web-site-design-web-marketing-
definitions-b.html)
‘Blog is short for Web log, and our Web pages that work as a
journal that our normally updated daily. Blogging sites can provide
excellent information on many topics, although content can be
subjective.’ (www.le.ac.uk/webcentre/help/glossary.html)
‘Like an online dairy. This can be about and be used for anything
at all, it can be used for news, reviews, products, for a business
organization’ (germworks.net/blog/2007/02/11/web-jargon-explained/)
We can notice that the word blog was originally known as
‘weblog’ written either together, or separately ‘web log’. Seeing it
written separately and if we forget about the word ‘web’ we can
indeed say it could be taken as the ‘log’ that used to be kept by the
captains of big ships. The difference represents the fact it was written
in a special notebook and it was not for the public, but only for the
captain and perhaps the crew. By relating facts in chronological order
it offered the possibility of placing the events in time and space, in
case of disasters. The blog contains personal thoughts and
experiences which the author made public. The blog may also contain
different topics although if not all the time with a subjective content.
‘This is a web log or online diary hosted on specific sites such as
www.blogger.com. It offers readers the opportunity to reply to
opinions and link to their own blogs.’
(www.iab.ie/FAQs/DefinitionofTerms/)
 ‘A blog is information that is instantly published to a Web site.
Blog scripting allows someone to automatically post information to a
Web site. The information first goes to a blogger Web site. Then the
information is automatically inserted into a template tailored for your
Web site.’ (mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/netterms.htm)
‘A blog is basically a journal or personal diary that is available
on the web. Blogs are typically updated daily using content
management software that allows people with little or no technical
background to update and maintain
them.’(newsletter.blizzardinternet.com/tech-glossary/)
‘This is a term coming from the combination of the terms web
log – it is a web page that serves as publicly accessible journal for the
author. It can be formal or informal, is usually updated daily and
reflects the personality of the author.’ (tig.lsc.gov/techglossary.php)
‘Blog is a web journal which is otherwise called as a "weblog".
entries are made on a regular or daily basis in a blog like an online
diary. Some blogs have definite authors who disclose their names and
some with anonymous authors who use a nickname.’
(www.searchenginegenie.com/search-engine-glossary-b.htm)
‘This is the slang term for web log. It is a journal that is kept on
the internet. Someone who keeps a journal on the internet like this is
called a blogger. They are typically updated daily or on a regular
basis.’
(www.corporatewebsitemarketing.com/search-engine-marketing-
glossary.html)
The blog is said to be the updated daily journal kept on the net. I
don’t agree because the purpose of a diary was not to be shown to
people. A diary was considered too personal to share, and according
to definitions the diary was a book in which one could keep his
experiences each day. Yet keeping events in a chronological order,
posting thoughts and reflecting the personality of the author
determined people to name it the online diary. Your most recent posts
are placed at the top of your home page along with everything else
you published that day. An integrated calendar keeps track of your
daily posts and allows site users to quickly access archived posts. The
information you may find is not necessarily valid, or entirely true. The
blog, is a diary that is first written on a computer and then posted on
the World Wide Web. It allows a person or a group of persons to share
a running log of events and personal insights with those who access
their page. The blogs which have political or current-events themes
due to their great number of accesses have and become ‘soap boxes’
(www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm)
After having read all these definitions I got to the conclusion
that the web log, short form blog, or the online diary, offers the
possibility of keeping your thoughts, feelings and events in your life on
a web page. A Weblog allows you to easily publish a wide variety of
content to the Web. You can publish written essays, annotated links,
documents, graphics, and multimedia. It is not only an easy way to
publish to the Web but a way to organize your entire published
product over time so that friends, associates, and customers can
easily find and interact with it. It is very important because you have
access to it when you use the internet and you don't need to be a
programmer in order to use a Weblog.
But where did all this come from? A blog is often a mixture of
what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the
Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site.
I.2. From Early Times to Present Day Blogs
 How did all started? Where there predecessors to blogging? Who
was the first blogger? These are some questions that have aroused in
my mind from the first moment I heard the term blog. In the following
paragraphs I will try and underline the significant stages that gave
birth to the modern day blogging. It is well known nowadays that
people kept online diaries long before the term blog was coined, but
once with the introduction of automated published systems, most
notably Blogger at blogger.com, they came aware of the term. More
and more people use services such as Blogger, when they want to
simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

The question ‘Who was the first blogger?’ arouse many disputes.
Hundreds of weblog pioneers will compete for that title, and it will be
interesting to see who they will consense upon. William Safire, a
language columnist, uses now and then the word consense as a
neologism: ‘ “consense” is a verb that can replace “form a
consensus”. Not the opposite of “nonsense”.’

We should reach back in history to find the person who first

popularized the idea of influencing the world by using some medium
to get across his ideas to large groups. In the search for the Grand
Originator, bloxicographers should not limit themselves to finding the
first to use the Internet. “Blogging” is broader than “creating a weblog
to express a personal opinion and/or to establish an information
community. Although the word “blogosphere” was coined in 1999 by
Brad L. Graham “as a joke” and re-minted in all seriousness in 2002
by William Quick with his Daily Pundit, we ought to dig more deeply to
place blogging in the great scheme of human communication.

Joseph Felcone, an antiquarian bookseller in Princeton N.J. was

the first to suggest a nominee. In his most recent catalogue of books
for sale, he lists under the headline “The First Blogger?” a book by
Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Gaius, better known to all of us as Pliny the
Younger, a consul of the Roman empire. The book is titled
“Epistolarum libri X. Panegyricus”. We all recognize “epistle” as a
letter; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, panegyricus is a
“public eulogy”. Thus, young Pliny’s book, one of nine he published
between A.D. 99 and 109, would be titled if published today: “Letters
in Praise of Great Friends”. This Roman consul is said to have
commented “on political events, social life in Rome and the provinces,
and the domestic events of the day. Some letters are paeans of praise
for particular friends, whereas others are requests for support of his
own agenda. Unlike many of the existing letters of Cicero, Pliny’s
letters were intended for public consumption, and are well-crafted
from a literary perspective.” Therefore could this not be the
definition of the pre-blogger, especially one touting a particular
candidate for office or seeking support for his own altruistic ideas or
nefarious schemes? Pliny the Younger (son of Pliny the Elder) deserves
consideration for the title of “First Blogger” in Joseph Felcone’s
opinion.

Others commenting on this OUP blog will put forward the

abovementioned Cicero, who preceded the Plinys by a century, famed
for his denunciation in the Senate of an assassination conspiracist.
Even if he doesn’t have a blog, Saphire affirms he had discovered the
first columnists: Simeon Stylites the Elder. According to the OED, a
stylite was “an ascetic who lived on the top of a pillar”. (Greek
“stylos” means “pillar”.) The sainted Simeon the Elder took up
residence atop a column in Syria in AD 423. He remained atop that
column and others for 37 years, each loftier and narrower than the
preceding; his final column was 66 feet high. Simeon the Elder stood
day and night, leaning on a rail, dependent for food on what his
disciples (and presumably the Younger) brought him by ladder. He
preached sermons to those gathered around his column, who then
went out and spread his pastoral teachings. Other columnists took up
his technique and were also called stylites. He was the subject of a
poem by Tennyson, concluding with “I, Simeon, The watcher on the
column till the end.”This was the first columnist. Who was the first
blogger, lefts to be decided by those who will access the blog
concerning this theme.

Blogs aren't as new as one may think. They have actually been
around since the early days of the Internet. In the strictest sense, a
blog is someone's online record of the Web sites he or she visits.
Before the proliferation of blogging, there have already been various
ways in which people can reach a mass audience with their online or
offline views. We shall explore how blogging came to be, from
amateur radio and bulletin board systems to the dawn of the first true
blogs.

I.2.1. Amateur Radio

In the early 1990s the amateur radio was the means through
which people communicated their opinions to friends, relatives or
strangers, before the Internet became popular. In order to be able to
operate an amateur radio station a person would have to obtain a
license after passing a test or a series of examinations. The degree of
difficulty differed from country to country. Once they obtained the
license they received a unique call sign with which to identify in order
to work legally. That was not enough. They needed specialized
equipment to be able to engage in a communication with other
amateur radio operators. With the right equipment, they could share
news or personal beliefs. By the mid 1990, once they had access to
internet they began posting the texts of their radio sessions on their
personal web pages. These were called text logs which are also known
as ‘glogs’. Together with the radio station, the text logs can be
considered the ancestors of today’s podcast, which are recordings
placed on web hosts and can be downloaded as audio files.

I.2.2. Bulletin Board Systems

Abbreviated BBS, the Bulletin board systems have also existed
before the Internet. The Computer Bulletin Board System (CBBS) went
operational in 1978 and was the first known BBS. It was not difficult to
utilize and the users could read news, play different games or even
exchange views through a digital message board. They used a
terminal program in order get into contact with other BBS users. But
as it is today the necessity to speed up things got rid of the old slow in
speed modems which were an impediment in the development.
During the 1980s, the BBS obtained recognition because of the
introducing of faster modems which allowed people from different
regions to get into contact. The faster modems proved to be a way to
send personal data and receive other person’s opinions and data.
During the Bulletin board system period the exchange of color images
took place, due to the appearance of the GIF image format in 1987. By
the beginning of the 1990s the Bulletin board systems had become
much appreciated. There were two monthly magazines devoted to
these systems. But that did not last for too long. Due to the
increasingly growth of Internet Usenet groups and Internet forum and
message board communities, in the mid-1990s bulletin board systems
lost their position. Let’s not forget that these systems, even before the
arrival of the Internet, had allowed people from the same region to
hold social discussions of current affairs and other topics of mutual
interest. Making you views and opinions known to a larger community
of people were the defining steps in the practice of modern blogging.
Posting ideas, sharing color images were necessary if we wanted to
communicate in different parts of our country and in different parts of
the Earth.

I.2.3. Personal WebPages

In the mid-1990s due to the spread of the Internet and the
appearance of free site hosts, people could set their own personal
pages on the web. In order to build a page, users needed basic
knowledge of HTML. For those without knowledge of HTML, specialized
sites with free hosts offered faster and easier solutions. This was a
huge step forward and it determined a growth in personal homepages.
People uploaded photos, different articles, songs and some kept on
their site a page where they would frequently update new events from
their lives. These pages served as a means to communicate at long
distances with friends and relatives. But as we are used to it, there
were also disadvantages. The information posted could not be
automatically updated and kept on the page. The person had to edit
the page by itself as there were no options to edit separately the old
and new posts. Although it sounds bizarre if we look at what the
Internet offers us today, things were not as easy as there are now, at
the beginning. They suffered a significant evolution. Nowadays, we
can easily display personal information on the web, as there is a great
number of free weblog hosts, which are easy to use.
I.2.4. The Birth of Blogging
Before knowing and fully using the term blog, people who would
write on sites or who kept online journals were called diarists,
journalists or escroibitionists. Blogging platforms are sites specially
dedicated to keeping online diaries, personal information. They are
considered to be among the first forms of blogging.

Dynamic Timeline:

January 1994
Swarthmore student Justin Hall creates first blog ever, Links.net.

December 1997
Online diarist Jorn Barger coins the term “Weblog” for “logging the
Web.”

April 1999
Programmer Peter Merholz shortens “Weblog” to “blog.”

August 1999
Blogger rolls out the first popular, free blog-creation service.

Brad L. Graham coins ‘Blogosphere’ “as a joke”

January 2000
Boing Boing is born.

July 2000
AndrewSullivan.com launches.

February 2002
Heather Armstrong is fired for discussing her job on her blog, Dooce.
“Dooced” becomes a verb: “Fired for blogging.”
August 2002
Nick Denton launches Gizmodo, the first in what will become a blog
empire. Blogads launches, the first broker of blog advertising.

The word ‘Blogosphere’ is re-minted in all seriousness in 2002 by

William Quick with his Daily Pundit

December 2002
Talking Points Memo highlights Trent Lott’s racially charged
comments; thirteen days later, Lott resigns from his post as Senate
majority leader.

December 2002
Gawker launches, igniting the gossip-blog boom.

March 2003
“Salam Pax,” an anonymous Iraqi blogger, gains worldwide audience
during the Iraq war.

June 2003
Google launches AdSense, matching ads to blog content.

August 2003
The first avalanche of ads on political blogs.

September 2003
Jason Calacanis founds Weblogs, Inc., which eventually grows into a
portfolio of 85 blogs.

January 2004
Denton launches Wonkette.
March 2004
Calacanis poaches Gizmodo writer Peter Rojas from Denton. Denton
proclaims himself “royally shafted” on his personal blog.

December 2004
Merriam-Webster declares “blog” the “Word of the Year.”

January 2005
Study finds that 32 million Americans read blogs.

May 2005
The Huffington Post launches.

October 2005
Calacanis sells his blogs to AOL for $25 million.

December 2005
An estimated $100 million worth of blog ads are sold this year.

January 2006
Time leases Andrew Sullivan’s blog, adding it to its Website.

February 2006
The Huffington Post surges to become fourth most-linked-to blog.

Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web, first posted a

web page in 1992 at CERN that kept a list of all new web sites as they
come online. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) started a What’s New list of sites in June 1993. Notably the site
provided entries sorts by date and the What’s New links included
commentary. This service was eventually taken over by Netscape in
what became on of the more popular websites of its time. In January
1994, Justin Hall, currently a freelance journalist, launches Justin’s
Home Page which would later become Links from the Underground.
The site included links to and reviews of other sites. Notably on 10
January 1996, Hall commences writing an online journal with dated
daily entries, although each daily post is linked by through an index
page. Of the journal he writes “Some days, before I go to bed, I think
about my day, and how it meshed with my life, and I write a little
about what learned me.” In February 1996, Dave Winer writes a
weblog that chronicles the 24 Hours of Democracy Project. After Jorn
Barger introduced the term weblog into popular use in December
1997, blogging as we now know it continued to develop. One of the
oldest online diary hosts was Open Diary, founded in the October of
1998. Open Diary was the online diary host that pioneered the first
web diaries commenting system. This system allowed visitors to share
their opinions about individual posts.
The origins of modern blogging are often as argued about as
what blogging is. Many point to blogs as websites or webpages that
provided links and comments to other pages, and it is from this basis
that modern blogs emerged.
According to Rebecca Blood in 1998 there were just a handful of
sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs. At the beginning
of 1999 there were only 23 blog known. It all started with Jesse James
Garrett, editor of Infosift, who began compiling a list of "other sites
like his" as he found them in his travels around the web. In November
of that year, he sent that list to Cameron Barrett. In November 1998,
Cameron Barrett published the first list of blog sites on Camworld, and
others maintaining similar sites began sending their URLs to him for
inclusion on the list. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on
Cameron's list, and most interested people did. The first portal
dedicated to listing blogs was launched. Brigitte Eaton launched the
Eatonweb Portal. Eaton evaluated all submissions by a simple
assessment that the site consist of dated entries, one of the criteria
we use to day in identifying a blog. In May 1999, Scott Rosenberg at
Salon.com writes one of the first media articles on the emergence of
weblogs and refers to the growing number of “Web Journalists”. More
and more people began blogging with the arrival of easy-to-use
blogging platforms which offered technologies such as perm links and
archives creation and commenting systems. Suddenly it became
difficult to read every weblog every day, or even to keep track of all
the new ones that were appearing. This rapid growth continued
steadily until July 1999 when Pitas, the first free build-your-own-
weblog tool launched, and suddenly there were hundreds.
There are now, by one count, over 70 million blogs in "print."

I.2.5. Have you heard of ‘Blogger’?

(Blogger.com as seen in 1999, when it was first set up by Pyra Labs)

‘Although scattered blogs existed during the late 1990s, it

wasn't until 1999 that San Francisco's Pyra Labs created the free Web
application Blogger. Originally, the hope was that the innovation
would help those collaborating on business projects to coordinate and
share information on an internal Web server, a kind of company
bulletin board.’ (Chris Mooney, February, 03, 2003 ‘Blogger’s History
re-imagined’ http://meg.hourihan.com/2003/02/bloggershistory-
reimagined). In August, Pyra released Blogger, and
Groksoup launched, and with the ease that these web-based tools
provided, the bandwagon-jumping turned into an explosion. In early
1999, Peter Merholz split up this word into ‘we’ and ‘blog’. Owned
today by Google, Blogger was the first to provide an easy set of tools
for anyone to set up a blog. Over the following 12 months, blogs
explode; new companies and tools enter the market. The blogging
explosion took place in 2001.
When we refer to the original weblogs, they were link-driven
sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary,
and personal thoughts and essays. Weblogs could only be created by
people who already knew how to make a website. The editors of the
sites presented links both to little-known corners of the web and to
current news articles they feel are worthy of note. Such links are
nearly always accompanied by the editor's commentary. Due to the
introduction of Blogger, the weblogs who had always included a mix of
links, commentary, and personal notes, changed their focus from the
web-at-large in favor of a sort of a short-form journal. These blogs,
often updated several times a day, were instead a record of the
blogger's thoughts: something noticed on the way to work, notes
about the weekend, a quick reflection on some subject or another.
Blogger itself places no restrictions on the form of content being
posted. Its web interface, accessible from any browser, consists of an
empty form box into which the blogger can type anything from a
passing thought to an extended essay or a childhood recollection.
With a click, Blogger will post the text on the writer's website, archive
it in the proper place, and present the writer with another empty box,
just waiting to be filled. A filter-style weblog was needed. It provided,
and still does, many advantages to its readers. It revealed glimpses of
an unimagined web to those who have no time to surf. An intelligent
human being filters through the mass of information packaged daily
for our consumption and picks out the interesting, the important, the
overlooked, and the unexpected.
In September of 2000 there were thousands of weblogs: topic-
oriented weblogs, alternative viewpoints, astute examinations of the
human condition as reflected by mainstream media, short-form
journals, and links to the weird and free-form notebooks of ideas.
Nowadays it is hard to establishe a number of blogs due to the great
number of users who may have an infinite number of blogs on any
theme they want.

(Blogger.com nowdays)

I.3. Steps in Creating Your Own Blog

It’s easy to create a blog. On any search engine you look there
will be the same three main steps for you to create your own, personal
blog. The first step consists in creating an account. You have to
introduce an e-mail address you will use to access your blog and other
Google services. This address is confidential and it can’t be mentioned
without your agreement. You have to reintroduce your e-mail in order
to avoid misspelling of certain words. There is a password which you
choose and which will grant you access to your account. Next you
choose the name which you want to appear when you open your page
or when you sign the messages in the blog. Some letters are
generated and you have to introduce them, and not forget to read and
thick, if you agree with the rules of utilization in order to complete the
first step to create your blog.
The second step is shorter then the first but with great
importance. In this step you give your blog a name and you have to
choose an URL address and check for its availability. If it is available
you will see a written message and that means that from now on this
URL will be used by visitors in order to access your blog.
In the third step you choose a template for the blog from those
already existing, with the possibility of changing it latter after your
blog has been configured.
The three steps completed you can now start and edit, posts
photos or anything else on your site. You can create blogs on certain
themes or you can use it for different purposes. We have to consider
blogs from many perspectives, although there are as many unique
types of blogs as there are people.

I.4. ‘Classification’ of Blogs

It is quiet difficult to classify blogs, which is why I have also put

the word classification in between inverted commas. We don’t have
any specialized criteria because they differ not only in th type of
content but also in the way the content is delivered or written.
Therefore we may try and make a general classification as they follow.
Personal blogs are the traditional and the most common type of
blogs. They belong to an individual, are usually updated daily and
comprise on-going diary or commentary. Blogs are often seen as more
than a way to just communicate. They become a way to reflect on life.
Blogging can have a sentimental quality. We may notice that personal
bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is
never read by anyone but them. Not many personal blogs rise to fame
and the mainstream.
Corporate blogs are blogs used either internally to enhance the
communication and culture in a corporation or externally for
marketing, branding or PR purposes. A corporate blog can be private,
as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes.
We also have the so called media type blogs. They comprise
music, photos, videos, and links and so on about one’s life. A blog
comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a
‘linklog’. Then we have sites with a map of sketches, called a
‘sketchblogs’ or comprising photos, called a ‘photoblogs’. ‘Tumblelogs’
are type of blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types. Art is also
present in web format under the name of ‘artlog’, it’s main focus are
the art works.
Another classification could be by the device they are formed.
We can mention here the ‘moblogs’, which are blogs written using a
mobile devices such as mobile phone or PDA. A type of an early blog,
semi-automated with live video together with text, referred to as
surveillance was Wearable Wireless Webcam. It as an online diary of a
person’s personal life combined with text, video, and pictures
transmitted live. These types of journals have been used in legal
matters as evidence.
Blogs focus on particular subjects. This determined another
criterion of classification. The subjects are diverse from political, legal,
projects related to travel, fashion, music, and others. We can also
include here the ‘splog’, which is not quiet a legitimate blog and its
sole purpose is that of spamming.
Health care blogs. If you've only heard of blogs from the
consumer press, you might think they consist entirely of blather about
pop culture and outrageous fulminations from the political far left and
far right, but the fact is, there are many serious, well written blogs,
and the major health care issues of the day are discussed on blogs —
before, and more extensively, than they are or could ever be
discussed in academic articles.
There are blogs which have multiple users. These blogs are
called ‘collaborative blogs’. In most cases there is a single uniting
theme, such as politics or technology that stands at the base of
collaborative blogs. In recent years, the blogosphere has seen the
emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, often
set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool time and
resources to both reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular
website and to attract a larger readership. Collaborative blogs seem to
have more chance to grow in popularity then blogs with only one user.
Micro-blogging is a
form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually
less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by
anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user.
These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including
text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. The most
popular service is called Twitter, which was launched in July 2006 and
won the Web Award in the blog category at the 2007 South by
Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas.[1] The main competitor to
Twitter is Jaiku. Recently, however, many new services, with the same
feature of micro-blogging are being born. Digg founder Kevin Rose,
together with three other developers recently launched a service
called Pownce, which integrates micro-blogging with file-sharing and
event invitations. The popular social networking websites Facebook
and MySpace also have a micro-blogging feature, called "status
update".

CHAPTER II
 PRAGMATICS- THE GREAT COMMUNICATION
CHALENGE

CHAPTER II:

II.1. Pragmatics- Great Communication Challenge

The purpose of this chapter is to observe the connection
established between the writer and the reader of a blog and whether
the intentions of the writer are well understood by the reader. It will
take us a lot of time to analyze each category of blog and that is why
the political blogs will be mentioned more along this chapter.
‘A subfield of linguistics developed in the late 1970s, pragmatics
studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or
speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a
conversation’ (October4,2006 http://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/
definition.html).
 Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as
communicated by the speaker, or writer, and interpreted by a listener,
or reader. Pragmatics studies what the speaker’s, writer’s meaning is.
It analyses what people mean by their utterances, instead of what the
words or phrases present might mean by themselves. This type of
study involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular
context and if or how the context influences what is said. We need to
take into consideration how people organize what they want to say in
accordance with who they are talking, or writing to, where, when and
under what circumstances. It is therefore very important what the
context’s meaning is. The speakers intended meaning is explored in
order to help the listener make ideas of what is said in order to arrive
at an interpretation. This way we might explore the unsaid things and
recognize what it was meant to be communicated. Since there is small
amount of meaning, it needs to be investigated closer. We can
communicate a lot of things even if we don’t necessarily explain them
in speech. The problem of what is said and what is unsaid arises and
we need to make a choice. The notion of distance appears into main
line. When we talk to people that are close to us in space, time,
physical, social or conceptual plans there is an amount of shared
experience. The speaker decides how much he needs to say on the
assumption of how close or distant he is with the listener. Distance is
another perspective that we need to take into consideration when we
deal with Pragmatics.
Here are the four areas that pragmatics is concerned with,
briefly:
‘Pragmatics is the study of the speaker meaning’
‘Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning’
‘Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said’
‘Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance’
(George Yule, Pragmatics, 1996, Oxford University Press)
The ability to comprehend and produce a communicative act is
referred to as pragmatic competence (Kasper, 1997) which often
includes one's knowledge about the social distance, social status
between the speakers involved, the cultural knowledge such as
politeness, and the linguistic knowledge explicit.
Implicit meaning , that is what can be meant or communicated
beyond what is explicitly or literally said, by means of presuppositions,
implications and implicators.

II.2. Pragmatics- Intentions in Communication

Since the work by Austin and Grice, linguistic pragmatics has
been mainly focused on the communicative use of language
conceived as intentional human action. The study of the agent’s
beliefs, desires and, particularly, intentions is crucial for
understanding what she has done. Naturally, then, the analysis of
beliefs, desires, and, particularly,
intentions is at the center of pragmatic studies. Grice’s study on
meaning intentions (Mintentions, Grice 1957, 1969) opened a long
debate on the exact definition of the now so-called communicative
intentions. Most approaches construe intention as a primitive mental
state, i.e., non-definable in terms of other mental states such as
beliefs and desires. Communicative intentions share, of course, the
characteristics of intentions in general, for instance:
- They are the mental causes of actions, that is, they are what
together with some bodily movements constitute an action, as distinct
from a mere event.
- They have conditions of consistency. You can desire p and desire
not-p
at the same time, but you cannot intend p and intend not-p at the
same
time.
- Their object is presupposed to be attainable by the agent. You can
desire to go to the moon this afternoon, but you cannot intend to go
to the moon this afternoon (unless you are a multimillionaire who has
made an arrangement with some spatial agency).
- Their object represents their conditions of satisfaction.
Communicative intentions have also some features of their own:
- They are usually intentions-in-action and not prior intentions (see
Searle 1983 for the distinction).
- They are social, in the Weberian sense of social action, i.e. they are
always oriented towards some other agent –the addressee.
- They are overt, that is, they are to be recognized by the addressee.
- Their satisfaction consists precisely in that recognition by the
addressee.
The last three characteristics are already pointed out in the first
version of M-intentions (Grice 1957): ““A meant something by x” is
(roughly) equivalent to “A intended the utterance of x to produce
some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this
intention””. (Grice 1957/1989, p. 220.) And their exact formulation
seems to constitute the reason for the main critiques and subsequent
reformulations by Grice himself (1969): ““U meant something by
uttering x” is true iff, for some audience A, U uttered x intending:
(1) A to produce a particular response r
(2) A to think (recognize) that U intends (1)
(3) A to fulfill (1) on the basis of his fulfillment of (2).” (Grice
1969/1989, p. 92.)
Here are represented Grice's Conversational Maxims:
Maxim of Quantity:
1. Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as
necessary.
2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more
informative than necessary.
Maxim of Quality:
1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Relevance:
Be relevant (i.e., say things related to the current topic of the
conversation).
Maxim of Manner:
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness).
4. Be orderly.

II.2.1. First Communicative Intentions

First, communicative intentions are intentions to produce some
response on the part of the addressee. The issue has been to define
what such a response should exactly be. It seems that what the
speaker usually intends by her communicative action is to change the
mental states of the addressee. But what change should it be for the
communicative intention to be successful? The intention of the
speaker when she says, for instance, ‘It is raining’ could be to induce
the addressee to believe that it is raining or, maybe, to believe that
the speaker believes that it is raining. But is any of these beliefs on
the part of the addressee necessary for the communicative action to
be successful qua communicative action? The most common answer
has been negative.
Perlocutionary aspects of that sort have been excluded from the
content of communicative intentions. It seems that the addressee’s
only new mental state needed is his recognition of the speaker’s
communicative intention; his understanding of the speaker’s
utterance. This is what has been called ‘illocutionary uptake’: “In the
case of illocutionary acts we succeed in doing what we are trying to do
by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But the
‘effect’ on the hearer is not a belief or a response; it consists simply in
the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker.” (Searle 1969,
p.47)

II.2.2. Second Communicative Intentions

Second, communicative intentions have to be wholly overt:
“The understanding of the force of an utterance in all cases involves
recognizing what may be called broadly an audience-directed
intention
and recognizing it as wholly overt, as intended to be recognized.”
(Strawson 1964, p. 459) The exact formulation of this overt nature of
communicative intentions has been a subject of hot debate, some
arguing for a reflexive (self-referential) definition, others for a
potentially infinite but practically finite number of clauses in the
definition, with conceptual, logical or psychological arguments. What
seems to be a matter of consensus is that every covert or even
neutral (with respect to its intended recognition by the addressee)
aspect of the speaker’s intention is left out of the definition of
communicative intentions. One way of summing this up is, finally, to
say that the fulfillment of communicative intentions consists precisely
in being recognized by the addressee. Much of the work in current
Pragmatics views linguistic understanding as the process of
recognition of the speaker’s communicative intentions. The addressee
relies on linguistic and extra linguistic information for reaching that
recognition. The ulterior
perlocutionary effects on the audience, intended or not intended by
the speaker, are usually ignored by pragmatic studies. This is where
Rhetoric can make its contribution. Persuasive as well as convincing
and other kinds of perlocutionary intentions seem to constitute the
basis of rhetorical studies of linguistic use.

II.3. Intentions in Communication in Political Blogs

Why political blogs, some might ask? Well I consider them to be
the most suitable example, that people write things not of the best
quality, sometimes in a large quantity and not of the best relevance.
Most bloggers wish to maximize their readership, but face very
substantial difficulties in gaining new readers. We argue that bloggers
and readers face an important coordination problem, which may be
analyzed as a pure coordination game. The problem is as follows.
Given the vast number of blogs even in the political subsection of the
blogosphere, it is extraordinarily hard for them to attract readers,
even when they have something interesting and unique to offer. Blog
readers, for their part, have an interest in finding interesting blog
posts. However, given search costs and limited time, it is near
impossible for readers to sift through the vast amounts of available
material in order to find the interesting posts.
 A political blog is a common type of blog that comments on
politics. In liberal democracies the right to criticize the government
without interference is considered an important element of free
speech. In other jurisdictions bloggers use the uncensored nature of
the internet to bypass state controlled news media but as a result may
find themselves persecuted. Political blogs often have a clearly stated
political bias. Although mainstream media news is often presented as
impartial, bloggers believe that it does in many cases have a hidden
political agenda. This assertion is supported by the propaganda
model. Stating political bias at the outset is therefore seen as being
more honest. On the other hand, blogs are often seen as being too
anonymous and lacking in factual reliability to be trustworthy.
However, they can serve as a soapbox for opinions not represented in
mainstream media.
The increasing popularity of political blogs by independent
commentators has led to their adoption by media companies,
politicians and other organizations hoping to be seen to be more
accountable to their audiences, but these are often not considered
"proper" blogs by the blogging community.
Blogs with large numbers of incoming links offer both a means
of filtering interesting blog posts from less interesting ones, and a
focal point at which bloggers with interesting posts, and potential
readers of these posts can coordinate 60. When less prominent
bloggers have an interesting piece of information or point of view that
is relevant to a political controversy, they will usually post this on their
own blogs. However, they will also often have an incentive to contact
one of the large ‘focal point’ blogs, to publicize their post. The latter
may post on the issue with a hyperlink back to the original blog, if the
story or point of view is interesting enough, so that the originator of
the piece of information receives more readers.
The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his
mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions. Blogging
every day, he will become a more confident writer. A community of
100 or 20 or 3 people may spring up around the public record of his
thoughts. Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more
confidence in his view of the world; he may begin to experiment with
longer forms of writing, to play with haiku, or to begin a creative
project--one that he would have dismissed as being inconsequential or
doubted he could complete only a few months before. As he
enunciates his opinions daily, this new awareness of his inner life may
develop into a trust in his own perspective. His own reactions--to a
poem, to other people, and, yes, to the media--will carry more weight
with him. Accustomed to expressing his thoughts on his website, he
will be able to more fully articulate his opinions to himself and others.
He will become impatient with waiting to see what others think before
he decides, and will begin to act in accordance with his inner voice
instead. Ideally, he will become less reflexive and more reflective, and
find his own opinions and ideas worthy of serious consideration.

His readers will remember an incident from their own childhood

when the blogger relates a memory. They might look more closely at
the other riders on the train after the blogger describes his
impressions of a fellow commuter. They will click back and forth
between blogs and analyze each blogger's point of view in a multi-
blog conversation, and form their own conclusions on the matter at
hand. Reading the views of other ordinary people, they will readily
question and evaluate what is being said. Doing this, they may begin
a similar journey of self-discovery and intellectual self-reliance.
II.4. Be careful what you say!
According to Nate Anderson when we think about starting a blog
we need to be very careful and prepared all the time to take charge
for our words. He therefore organized six principles one has to follow:
1. "We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we
allow on our blog."
2. "We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person."

3. "We connect privately before we respond publicly."

4. "When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take
action."
5. "We require commenter to supply a valid e-mail address before
they can post."
6. "we ignore the trolls." (Nate Anderson, April 09, 2007 - 11:51AM CT
‘Blogger Code of Conduct: the tyranny of good intentions’ http://
arstechnica.co/news.ars/post/20070409-prohibition-and-candelight-
marches-a-code-of-conduct-for bloggers.html)
According to the first principle blog owners will do more than
require "accountability"; they will enforce civility by deleting posts.
Candidates for deletion include any posts that abuse or threaten
others, contain knowingly false information or ad hominem attacks,
posts that "misrepresent" another person, anything that infringes
upon copyright or violates confidentiality or the privacy of others. This
wide-ranging list does not go over well with some critics of the plan,
who also are uneasy about the fact that the rules can change at any
time. We give a definition and determine what is 'unacceptable
content' on a case-by-case basis. Deleting posts is supposed to come
with an explanation of why the material was removed, but this is still
an incredibly wide-ranging list of things to police. "Misrepresenting"
someone else's position, in particular, is a tough one to handle; who
decides whether a position is being misrepresented? The burden of
enforcing this falls on the site moderators, who are put in the
unenviable position of having to understand exactly what it is that
every poster meant by his or her post, and then deciding if summaries
or responses to that post got it wrong. This seems impractical, to put
it mildly. Tightening up the definition to include "willful
misrepresentation" might make things easier, except that it would
then require moderators to make judgments about what particular
posters intended; in essence, psychic moderators would be required,
and anyone who has tried to hire a psychic moderator recently knows
that the market for them is tight. Ad hominem attacks, easier in
theory to find and remove, in practice pose plenty of thorny problems.
We need look no further than our own forums to see the endless
argument over what does and does not constitute an illegitimate
attack on another person.
The second principle deals with the power to speak white. The
nature of online communities makes it easy to lash out in anger,
sarcasm, or abuse, forgetting that a real person is at the other end of
a distant IP address. Of course, plenty of people would (and do) make
abusive comments to others in person, so this rule might be of limited
utility, but it seems like a good place to start for most posters.
In the third case we must realize that not all events, that affect
other people too, are meant to be public. So whenever a problem
arises, the two people involved should make contact through some
other means before hashing out the issue on public message boards.
This is supposed to happen whenever "we encounter conflicts and
misrepresentation in the blogosphere," which is fine, except that
conflict (in the form of argument and debate) is often the reason that
people visit blogs. Perhaps this principle works best when applied to
the interpersonal rivalries or dislikes that crop up in every community;
when it comes to ideas, though, the entire point is to hash out
arguments in the open, whether they are about politics or the best
audio card to buy for your basement recording studio.
The fourth principle is more like a call to action. This isn't a call
to vigilante justice, but an appeal to bloggers to stand up against
offensive postings. When someone makes an asinine, offensive, or
abusive post on a blog, the code asks other bloggers to contact that
person, point out the fault, and ask them to make amends publicly.
Comments that could be construed as a threat will be turned over to
the police for action.
In the case of the fifth, no anonymous comments are allowed.
We can’t launch gossip and pretend we did not do it. We ought to
stand and face life as it is, and not misinform the readers.
The last but not least principle is that of spotting when someone
is misleading, trolling us. Again, in practice, this can be very difficult,
and can often lead to charges of "trolling" when controversial opinions
are posted. In general, though, it's a solid principle.
We must be clear if we want the message transmited to be well
interpreted, the reader to get the idea, and we mustn’t be fake. Since
we had the courage to initiate something, initiate something worth
spending time. Some might say they can survive without blogs. I
totally agree, but why not try and see?
 CHAPTER III
WHY BLOG?

CHAPTER III
III.1. Why Blog?
This chapter is meant to convince to try for once and only after
that point your disapprovals. Indeed there are disadvantages to
blogging, and I have already encountered them, but if we stop at
every small detail then why do anything?
 When I start a post I have no idea where I'm heading. I love that
freedom. Blog writing is like going off for a walk with no
predetermined finish time or route, sometimes the walk is through the
fields, sometimes along the streets. There are moments we need to be
fully aware of the passing of life, a life one builds and maintains using
conversations and relationships with other people.
Another reason for blogging is to participate in the creation of a
world which, as Dr. Weinberger put it in World of Ends, nobody owns,
everybody can use, and anybody can improve.
Since my blog is so new people have been asking me what its
about and why I do it. I don’t have yet a certain theme for my blog. I
am not so focused, probably because I’m passionate about too many
things. Blogs should show personality. If I connect with someone
through their blog or anything else they do, I may not want to hear
about their new car acquisition, but I might be interested in hearing
about their trip to the mountain, their joys and pains and their
thoughts on spirituality. I don’t quiet manage to write daily because I
work a lot on my dissertation paper which I have mentioned there.
One of the things I’ve noticed since I started this blog is how much
more attention I pay to the details, whether its something someone
says or a painting and its vibrant colors. I want to write about things
that make us feel human. For me, it’s the humanity I see in a blog
that keeps me coming back for more.
Where do we draw the line? How much of our personal side
should we show on our blogs? Despite the fact that the ‘role of the
blog’ has changed over time and will continue to morph as their value
unfolds, I’m not sure the feeling that creating a blog post invokes for
so many of us will change. What I’m sure of is that I would like to
create a blog that would recreate a warm and inviting atmosphere,
like that I used to live in the house of my grandparents during
evenings or holydays when they would gather all nephews tell stories
and relive their lives.

III.2. Advantges and Disadvantages of a Blog over a Website

Advantages are numerous and above all is the freedom of
speech which allows one to make friends online and share knowledge
with them.
You don't have to mess with an HTML layout. You just post your info
and the info looks wonderful because the Blog uses the template that
you set up. You can post as often as you like. I can't imagine that I
would send an email to my zone every day but with a Blog you can
post as much as you would like. You have unlimited access and can
make as many blogs as you like on any subject. There are a lot of
spams, but email spam filters do not block blogs because they are not
an email communication.
According to Gerry McGovern, from an organizational
perspective the advantages include the following:
-The consumer and citizen are potentially better informed and this can
only be good for the long-term health of our societies and economies.
-Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger
relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact
with the ‘human face’ of the organization through blogs.
-Blogs, in an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing
knowledge within the organization.
-Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your
finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story
ideas, etc. -Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the
organization as having talent and expertise.
 The fact that you need to keep the blog constantly updated, if
you don’t want to loose potential readers, and although it’s easy to
start it’s hard to maintain constitute disadvantages of blogs. Gerry
McGovern classifies disadvantages as it follows:
-Most people don’t have very much to say that’s interesting, and/or
are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner.
-I have often found that the people who have most time to write have
least to say, and the people who have most to say don’t have enough
time to write it. Thus, the real expertise within the organization lays
hidden, as you get drowned in trivia.
-Like practically everything else on the Web, blogs are easy to start
and hard to maintain. Writing coherently is one of the most difficult
and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake. So, far
from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in
that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus
damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization.
-Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many
organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and
opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer
prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at
least somewhat coherent.

III.3. Tips for a Better Weblog

This is an age where you will build your professional reputation
word by word. Start off by finding something people care about and
that you care about.
Choose an updating tool that is easy to use. Try out several
services. There are free, or cost a little money, but don't commit to a
tool until you have had a chance to try it out. Pick the one that works
best for you. After having done this determine your purpose. Weblogs
are used to filter information, organize businesses, share family news,
establish professional reputations, foment social change, and muse
about the meaning of life. Knowing what you hope to accomplish with
your weblog will allow you to begin in a more focused way.
Try and establish an intended audience. You conduct yourself
differently with your friends than you do with professional associates,
strangers, customers, or your grandmother. Knowing for whom you
are writing will allow you to adopt an appropriate tone.
You must remember to be real. Even a professional weblog can
be engaging. Speak in a real voice about real things. Write about what
you love. A weblog is the place for strong opinions, whether about
politics, music, social issues, gardening, or your profession. The more
engaged you are with your subject, the more interesting your writing
will be. If you want results, update frequently. Interested readers will
return to your site if there is likely to be something new. You needn't
update every day, but try to post several times a week.
Do not forget to be truthful, respectful to your audience and to
your fellow bloggers. Establish your credibility. Understand that on the
Internet, your words may live forever, whether they are self-published
or archived on another site. In the Weblog Handbook, I propose a set
of Weblog Ethics; think about your own standards, and then adhere to
them.
We have to link to our sources and to other weblogs. The Web
allows a transparency that no other medium can duplicate. When you
link to a news story, an essay, a government document, a speech, or
another blogger's entry, you allow your readers access to your
primary material, empowering them to make informed judgements.
Your readers may enjoy being introduced to the weblogs you most
enjoy reading. The Web is a democratic medium and bloggers amplify
each other's voices when they link to each other. Generously linking
to other weblogs enlarges the grassroots network of information
sharing and social alliances we are creating together on the Web.
Whether your blog is a hobby or a professional tool, it will be
more rewarding for you if you allow yourself to experiment a little.
Even if most blog audiences are small at the beginning, with time and
regular updates your audience will grow. You may never have more
than a few hundred readers, but the people who return to your site
regularly will come because they are interested in what you have to
say.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS RELATED TO BLOGS
Glossary of Terms Related to Blogs:

Artlog is a form of art sharing and publishing in the format of a

blog, but differentiated by the predominant use of and focus on Art
work rather than text.

Audioblog blogging method by which the author does not

create posts in text but (generally) in the audio MPEG-3 format and
makes them available to download from website.

Audioblogging started gaining popularity recently in 2003.

Most bloggers use this as a platform to spread their self-created music
or more obscure (‘indie’, non-mainstream) music in addition to their
posts which are read out loud like radio broadcasts.

Autocasting automated method of podcasting that allows both

bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions.

B
Blam used to describe blogs that are nothing but advertising or
marketing often generated mechanically.

Blawg used for blogs relating to justice and laws.

 Bleg blog post consisting of a request or appeal to readers.
Colloquial term derived from the words ‘blog’ and ‘beg’.

Blog to edit (or update) or add new material to a weblog.

*A shorter version of the word ‘weblog’, which was popularized by
Peter Merholz when he split the original term into the phrase ‘we blog’
on his own weblog.

Blog Client is software to manage blog(s) from operating

system without need to launch web browser software. A typical blog
client has more features than an online editor, such as spell-checkers
and more options for advanced content creation and editing.

BlogDay August 31st special event. On BlogDay every year,

bloggers from all over the world post a recommendation of 5 new
blogs, preferably, blogs different from their own culture, point of view
and attitude. Most bloggers use BlogDay to explore other bloggers’
blogrolls.

Blog Feed XML-based file for a blog which allows it to be read

in another format. The XML-based file in which the blog hosting
software places a machine-readable version of the blog so that it may
be "syndicated" for further distribution on the web. Formats such as
RSS and Atom are used to structure the XML file.

Blog Hopping means to follow the links from one blogroll or

blog entry to another.

Blogger-person who authors and updates a weblog- created by

Pyra Labs, is a service that provides Web-based tools used by
individuals to publish weblogs on the World Wide Web.
 Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all weblogs
or blogs, referring to them as a community or a social network.
Weblogs are interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them,
reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each
others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown
their own culture.

Blogroll represents a collection of links to other weblogs.

Blogrolls are often found on the front page sidebar of most weblogs.

Blogsnob someone who refuses to respond to comments on

their blog from those outside their circle of friends.

Blogstorm used to describe a large amount of activity,

information and opinion erupting around a particular subject in the
blogosphere.

Blogstream the alternative news and information network

growing up around weblogs and user-driven content mechanisms. In a
nutshell, it is a play on the term “mainstream”, and describes the
alternative network of blogs delivering news and information instead
of other more established channels.

Body represents the main body containing weblog post

contents.

C
Citation represents the recognition or quotation from another
blog or blogger.

Comment text note left on a post to indicate readers’ feelings

and thoughts.
 Comment Spam flooding a blog with advertising comments. It
is a serious problem that requires banning tools or password
protection for blogs.

D
DarkBlog is a non-public blog, generally password-protected or
behind a firewall.

F
Flog a fake blog or more suitable a combination of “fake” and
“blog”.

G
Glog text logs.

I
Internet represents the network of all networks; the medium
through which blogs derive their existence.

L
Links see Blogroll.

M
Merholz, Peter was person who is credited with starting up the
first blog in history.

Milblog is a blog authored by members of the armed forces. It

is derived from the combination of “military” and “blog”.

Moblog is a blog authored on the move, generally through

mobile phones.

Movable Type - popular blog editing program. See also

WordPress
 Multi-blog represents the act to create and maintain two or
more blogs simultaneously.

Multi-blogger is an individual or organization that creates and

maintains two or more blogs simultaneously.

P
Permalink is a permanent link to the URL of a single post.

Photoblog represents the blog whose content is mainly of

photos.

Ping alert in the TrackBack system that notfifies original author

when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.

Podcast posting audio and video material on a blog’s RSS feed

for readers to download and listen to. This is a break from traditional
text methods of supplying information – podcasts are gaining
popularity as an alternative to the text-and-jpg method of blogging.

Post the unit of measurement for blog content.

Q
Quatrain is a style of writing. It is derived from the poetic
device “quatrain”, and hence denotes an extremely irritating style of
writing by which every other word rhymes and each line contains a set
number of syllables.

R
RSS ’Really Simple Syndication’ It represents alternative means
of accessing the vast amount of information available on the internet.
Instead of browsing the websites directly, information is sent to the
user instead.
 RSS Aggregator software or online service allowing a blogger
to acces and read an RSS feed.

RSS Feed file containing a blog’s latest posts and updates.

Read by an RSS aggregator and shows when a blog has been updated.

S
Sketchblog is a site containing a portfolio of sketches.

Shocklog is the blog designed to engineer rumours and

discussion by posting various shocking content – i.e. porn, violence,
etc.

Splog blog composed entirely of spam, or which has no “written

value”.

T
Tumblelogs are blogs with shorter posts and mixed media
types.

Trackback means whereby different weblogs/websites can

notify each other to inform each other of citations and/or related
resources. Trackback is a system implemented by Movable Type and
later adopted by other blogging tools, which allows a blogger to see
who has seen the original material and created a separate article
concerning it.

Troll blog commenter whose sole purpose is to attack the views

expressed on the blog. Verbosity ranges from eloquent to outright
vulgar.

V
Vlog A blog comprising videos
 Vorage represents the act of foraging for video on the internet
and sharing it with others. It is derived from the words “forage” and
“video”.

W
Weblog online publication with regular posts and updates

WordPress is a popular blog editing tool. See also Movable

Type.

X
Xanga blogging service. See also Blogger.

XML’Extensible Markup Language’ it is used for information

exchange.

Conclusion
 This paper was meant to bring the nowadays wide spread term
‘blog’ closer to those who have heard of it vaguely and haven’t quiet
decided whether to appel to it or not.
As I already mentioned it is something we can indeed live
without, but are people so lazy and unopened to new? I don’t think so.
I, myself did not know almost anything about this phenomenon,
because it has become a phenomenon, until late last year. I have
heard it mentioned but it skipped my interest. What arouse my
interest was that everybody started to mention blog more and more.
You can hear about blog on any channel you watch. I even counted in
one day with approximation around 96 times the word being
mentioned.
I started my blog, which I called ‘hotmihroz’ and which you can
visit at (http://www.hotmihroz.blogspot.com/), but I haven’t quiet
decided yet on a certain theme for it. I don’t manage to post daily that
is why it is not known only by very close friends. In the mere future I
hope I’ll have the time and ‘take the bull by the horns’.
I would like to end this paper with these two quotes and hope I
managed to put blogs in your agenda, as things I want to do next.
‘Bloggers are people with attitude. They say there's a book
inside everybody. Well, the Web and blogs have let the book
out!’(Gerry McGovern, ‘Blogs and blogging: advantages and
disadvantages’ August 23, 2004,
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_08_23_
blogging.htm)
"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by
a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our
actions run as causes and return to us as results." Herman Melville
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