What is weblog?

Today, weblogs are very common and trendy among the society especially the youngsters. As stated by Robin Good (2007), there are about 120,000 new weblogs created each day which means 1.4 blogs are created every second.

According to Medoff and Kaye (2005), weblog is a new type of website which is generally known as blog. The content of the blogs can be based on one or several subjects or themes. Moreover, blogs are often updated with new information about certain topics which can be generated by the site owner, gained from other websites or sources or added by other users (TechTarget 2009).

Blogs are being used for different purposes. Frauenfelder and Kelly (2000) describes blogs as “literacy self-expression” because they allow the bloggers to speak out their opinions, for example by criticizing or praising country policies or talking about what is happening in the world. Instead of expressing their feelings or recording down their memories in the diaries, youngsters today prefer sharing their feelings and experiences in the blogs (Medoff and Kaye, 2005, p.86).

Furthermore, blogs provide benefits to the businessman and people who wanted to make friends because blogs allow the bloggers to interact with other users. For instance, with the “comments” textbox, it allows the readers or visitors to dedicate their opinions which could help the businessmen understand their customers and improve the quality and quantity of their products (Rabin Dhakal, 2009).

Moreover, compared to other media such as television, radio or print media, most of the blogs are free such as the blogs at blogspot.com. Therefore, blogs are often used as communication and promotion tools by the users (Rabin Dhakal, 2009). For example, one of the reasons that caused Earth Hour to be a success was the fact that there were many bloggers promoting the Earth Hour event through blogs.

In addition, blogs provide unlimited space to the users which allow the bloggers to add in more features to their blogs such as videos and photos (Rabin Dhakal, 2009). Also, blogs are very convenient as it is very easy to create them because many blog hosts provide sets of templates and layouts for the bloggers. Moreover, blogs do not need any advance or expensive software to be maintained.

References:
Medoff, JN & Kaye KB 2005, Electronic Media: Then, Now and Later, Pearson Education, United State of America.

Robin Good 2007, Blog Usage Statistics and Trends: Technorati State of the Blogosphere, Master New Media, viewed 6 June 2009, http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/04/06/blog_usage_statistics_and_trends.htm.

TechTarget 2009, What is weblog? , viewed 6 Jun 2009, http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci213547,00.html

Rabin Dhakal 2009, Advantages of Blogs, Ezine Article, viewed 6 June 2009, http://ezinearticles.com/?Advantages-Of-Blogs&id=811640