Still defining the word “blog”?

To many people it might sound strange that in 2008, I am still making a post to define what a blog is. If this surprises you, then I can easily know two things about you: where you are, and whom you think about. I am from Africa, and when I think about any aspect of the web, I also think about my fellow Africans who do not have the privilege to know as much as I know about computers and the Internet. More than 90% of people living around me don’t know what a blog is. I guess this justifies why I must run a blog about blogging, and teach and encourage people to blog.

Let’s start with the Diary

Before we understand what a blog is, we must understand what a diary is, what it is being used for and how it is being used. A diary is some sort of a personal journal. Most people like keeping a record reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. This record is usually kept in a special book with discrete entries arranged by date. Any list of events with associated time or period of occurrence is called a log. A diary can therefore be considered as a log of one’s activities.

From book log to web log

Instead of keeping this log of events in a special books as I earlier mentioned, just imagine them being posted on the web instead. This log will then be considered a web log of events. Someone (we shall talk about later) shortened the word weblog to blog. Blog is the standard used nowadays.

So, what actually is a blog

If you ask Google , you will certainly get a long list of definitions of blog. A blog is a frequently updated online journal with entries arranged in reverse chronological order. This is probably one of the simplest and most straightforward definitions of a blog.

Following the above definition, there are four things you must not forget about blogs

1. A blog is a journal or diary
2. This particular type of journal or diary is online
3. Just like a traditional paper diary, it is frequently updated
4. The entries in a blog are usually arranged in a reverse chronological manner. That is, the most recent entry at the top and older entries at the bottom.

Click here for more definitions of what a blog is.

Below is a list of blogs you can visit to see how what they look like.

Mambe Nanje - http://mambenanje.blogspot.com
World In Ur Pocket - http://worldinurpocket.com
Pro Blogger - http://problogger.net
Dosh Dosh - http://doshdosh.com
Onyeka Nwelue - http://www.onyekanwelue.blogspot.com/
Bhavani Kannan - http://bhavanikannan.info/
Dr. Faheem - http://www.dentalblogging.com/
Kunthan - http://kunthan.blogspot.com/
Shanker Bakshi - http://www.shankerbakshi.com/
Shashank - http://www.techlivez.com/
Vidhya Iyer - http://iyercooks.blogspot.com/
Yaro Starak - http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/
Uncle Che Online - http://uncleche.blogspot.com/

The above is a very short list 13 out of millions of blogs on the Internet. You will discover many more as you browse the web. If you have visited a few or all of them, then you can comfortably call yourself a “seasoned blog reader”…ha ha ha, not really.

I bet you must have noticed that these blogs have certain things in common that make them look different from regular websites. In our next article, we shall be looking at the differences between a blog and a website.

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