Blogging Begins
Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier, specifically blogrolls and TrackBacks, as well as comments and afterthoughts. This way, instead of a few people being in control of threads on a forum, or anyone able to start threads on a list, there was a moderating effect that was the personality of the weblog's owner. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers.
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997. The shorter version, "blog", was coined by Peter Merholz, who, in April or May of 1999, broke the word weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog. This was interpreted as a short form of the noun and also as a verb to blog, meaning "to edit one's weblog or a post to one's weblog". Usage spread during 1999, with the word being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted weblog tools: Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan's company Pyra Labs launched Blogger (which was purchased by Google in February 2003) and Paul Kedrosky's GrokSoup. As of March 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary included the terms weblog, weblogging and weblogger in their dictionary.
One of the pioneers of the tools that make blogging more than merely websites that scroll is Dave Winer. One of his most important contributions was the creation of servers which weblogs would ping to show that they had been updated. Blog reading utilities, such as Blogrolling, use the aggregated update data to show a user when their favorite blogs have new posts.
Common Blog Terms
Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialised vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.
Audioblog
A blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings sent by mobile phone, sometimes with some short text message added for metadata purposes. (cf. podcasting)
Bleg
A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of "blog" and "beg".
Blog Feed
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.
Blogfoo
Statements written with an air of generality while obviously pointed at a specific person or group of people.
Blog Hopping
to follow links from one blog entry to another, with related side-trips to various articles, sites, discussion forums, and more.
Blogorrhoea
A portmanteau of "blog" and "diarrhea", meaning excessive and/or incoherent talkativeness in a weblog.
Blogroll
A list of blogs. Usually a blogger features a list of his favorite blogs in the sidebar of his blog. These lists can be made dynamic using services like BlogRolling.
Blog Site
The web location (URL) of a blog, which may be either a dedicated domain, a sub-domain, or embedded within a web site.
Blogsite
Sometimes confused with a simple blog or blog site, but a blogsite is a web site which combines blog feeds from a variety of sources, as well as non-blog sources, and adds significant value over the raw blog feeds.
Blogsnob
A person who refuses to respond to comments on their blog from people outside their circle of friends.
Dark Blog
A non-public blog (e.g. behind a firewall)
Moblog
A portmanteau of "mobile" and "blog". A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages. They are often photoblogs.
Permalink
Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. Use this when you want to link to a post somewhere.
Ping
The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.
TrackBack
A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a 'ping' between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.
via [ Blog Pad ] [ post updated 2004 ]
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