English Project

Blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog")[1] is a

discussion or informational website
published on the World Wide Web
consisting of discrete, often informal
diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are
typically displayed in reverse chronological
order, so that the most recent post
appears first, at the top of the web page.
Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of
a single individual, occasionally of a small
group, and often covered a single subject
or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs"
(MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of
multiple authors and sometimes
professionally edited. MABs from
newspapers, other media outlets,
universities, think tanks, advocacy groups,
and similar institutions account for an
increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise
of Twitter and other "microblogging"
systems helps integrate MABs and single-
author blogs into the news media. Blog
can also be used as a verb, meaning to
maintain or add content to a blog.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the
late 1990s coincided with the advent of
web publishing tools that facilitated the
posting of content by non-technical users
who did not have much experience with
HTML or computer programming.
Previously, a knowledge of such
technologies as HTML and File Transfer
Protocol had been required to publish
content on the Web, and early Web users
therefore tended to be hackers and
computer enthusiasts. In the 2010s, the
majority are interactive Web 2.0 websites,
allowing visitors to leave online
comments, and it is this interactivity that
distinguishes them from other static
websites.[2] In that sense, blogging can be
seen as a form of social networking
service. Indeed, bloggers do not only
produce content to post on their blogs, but
also often build social relations with their
readers and other bloggers.[3] However,
there are high-readership blogs which do
not allow comments.
Many blogs provide commentary on a

particular subject or topic, ranging from
politics to sports. Others function as more
personal online diaries, and others
function more as online brand advertising
of a particular individual or company. A
typical blog combines text, digital images,
and links to other blogs, web pages, and
other media related to its topic. The ability
of readers to leave publicly viewable
comments, and interact with other
commenters, is an important contribution
to the popularity of many blogs. However,
blog owners or authors often moderate
and filter online comments to remove hate
speech or other offensive content. Most
blogs are primarily textual, although some
focus on art (art blogs), photographs
(photoblogs), videos (video blogs or
"vlogs"), music (MP3 blogs), and audio
(podcasts). In education, blogs can be
used as instructional resources. These
blogs are referred to as edublogs.
Microblogging is another type of blogging,
featuring very short posts.
On 16 February 2011, there were over

156 million public blogs in existence. On
20 February 2014, there were around 172
million Tumblr[4] and 75.8 million
WordPress[5] blogs in existence worldwide.
According to critics and other bloggers,
Blogger is the most popular blogging
service used today. However, Blogger does
not offer public statistics.[6][7] Technorati
lists 1.3 million blogs as of February 22,
2014.[8]
History
1997, actually referred to their online
presence as a zine, before the term blog
entered common usage.
Technology
Early blogs were simply manually updated

components of common Websites. In
1995, the "Online Diary" on the Ty, Inc. Web
site was produced and updated manually
before any blogging programs were
available. Posts were made to appear in
reverse chronological order by manually
updating text based HTML code using FTP
software in real time several times a day.
To users, this offered the appearance of a
live diary that contained multiple new
entries per day. At the beginning of each
new day, new diary entries were manually
coded into a new HTML file, and the start
of each month, diary entries were archived
into its own folder which contained a
separate HTML page for every day of the
month. Then menus that contained links to
the most recent diary entry were updated
manually throughout the site. This text-
based method of organizing thousands of
files served as a springboard to define
future blogging styles that were captured
by blogging software developed years
later.[16]
The evolution of electronic and software
tools to facilitate the production and
maintenance of Web articles posted in
reverse chronological order made the
publishing process feasible to a much
larger and less technically-inclined
population. Ultimately, this resulted in the
distinct class of online publishing that
produces blogs we recognize today. For
instance, the use of some sort of browser-
based software is now a typical aspect of
"blogging". Blogs can be hosted by
dedicated blog hosting services, on regular
web hosting services, or run using blog
software.
Rise in popularity
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained

in popularity. Blog usage spread during
1999 and the years following, being further
popularized by the near-simultaneous
arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
Bruce Ableson launched Open Diary in

October 1998, which soon grew to
thousands of online diaries. Open Diary
innovated the reader comment,
becoming the first blog community
where readers could add comments to
other writers' blog entries.
Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal in
March 1999.
Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in
July 1999 as an easier alternative to
maintaining a "news page" on a Web
site, followed by DiaryLand in
September 1999, focusing more on a
personal diary community.[22]
Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra
Labs) launched Blogger.com in August
1999 (purchased by Google in February
2003)
Political impact

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Blog

A blog (a truncation of "weblog")[1] is a

Many blogs provide commentary on a

On 16 February 2011, there were over

Early blogs were simply manually updated

After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained

Bruce Ableson launched Open Diary in

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