Blogs and blogging. What are they?

According to the well-known online Wikipedia, a blog (also called weblog) "is a type of 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."

Blogger.com - a popular blogging platform

It continues, "...many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts."

To have a broader understanding of what a blog or blogging is, we look at various definitions from several sources:

• ‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source
• ‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source
• 'A journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source
• ‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source
• 'A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently.’ Source
• ‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source

It is therefore clear that blogs can be maintained by individuals, corporate entities, communities, social groups, etc; if such websites provide commentary or news on particular subjects. And that the continuous updating of such sites with fresh information, whether in the form of text, images or otherwise is blogging.

As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.

Blogs and blogging can be viewed as investments on the internet real estate because they are means through which one can make extra legitimate money in addition to one's regular income, and indeed in some instances have become the sole source of significant income for others.

And this blog you are reading is no exception. Ciao!