Blog This!

This article was posted in the October Edition of my college magazine – ‘Vibrations’. To see the online edition of the same, kindly visit http://www.ssnce.ac.in/vibrations/ssnoctvol2.pdf
And also this day marks my entry into my third year of blogging. Here goes the article!

Blog – A word that sparked the Internet lovers into a complete craze. A normal Internet user would be completely aware of what a blog is. For others who don’t, don’t go searching for the meaning of the word ‘Blog’ in a dictionary, cause you wouldn’t find it. Blog is derived from the word ‘Weblog’. Interesting news from Wikipedia tells that a guy named Peter Merholz jokingly split the word Weblog into ‘We Blog’ and thus the word ‘Blog’ was born.

Experience Web 2.0
Since the days when Internet became famous among the public, there was a need of sharing between the users around the globe. Although there was no technical updates in the World Wide Web, Web 2.0 was introduced which specified the new ways in which software developers used the web. A weblog is one of the treasures of Web 2.0

How blogging started?
People initially blogged to maintain a record of their day-to-day activities and their personal life. Later when blogs became more popularized, the option of posting a comment was introduced. Thus a blog became like a forum. Unlike a forum, where anyone can post their own topic and people can reply to it, a blog has only one user posting a particular topic but anyone else can post a comment.

Journal vs. Blog:
Not long after Blogs reached every corner of the world, people started blogging on their perspectives of life and the world around them. This is almost similar to a journal or a newspaper.

What can you do if you blog?
A blog is one’s own world. One can post a complete autobiography of him or maintain a diary of his personal activities. A techie can post on news related to latest technology. A movie buff can maintain a blog on movie reviews and latest news. In short, one can express his or her own views on the World Wide Web, all this for free. Moreover the user gets a free space for him on the web, which is much more like a web page. People who blog gets to meet people with similar interests thus solving the purpose of Web 2.0. Nowadays many people blog just for the sake of earning money. This can prove how much blogging has revolutionized the present generation.

Many companies maintain a blog for themselves, for their exposure to the entire world. Some managing directors and HRs of renowned companies own a blog and they regularly update it amidst their busy schedule. If you are a user of Orkut, then you would have known that Orkut too owns a blog for itself.

Freedom of Blogging:
A person who blogs (cannot be called as a blogger) enjoys the freedom of blogging and the experience it gives him. It is a place where one can unleash their creativity. If you are a person who dislikes writing, you may wonder how blogging could be of any use. The person who blogs (lets call him a blogger anyway) is forced to think and he is forced to do something original. By doing it, he is broadening his mind and looking at the society with a much broader view than other people.

Types of Blogging:
For people who enjoy writing, there is blogging and ofcourse but what for person who doesn’t enjoy writing? With blogging sizzling craze between everyone, different types of blogs came into existence. For a person who enjoys talking, there is audio blogging. For a person who likes to show it in action, there is video blogging more popularly called as Vlog. Mobile blogging, also called as moblog, allowed people to blog when they are on the move.

Where should you go if want to blog?
Blogger.com (owned by Google) and WordPress.com are two of the best options available to you if you want to blog. If you are a novice to blogging or to Internet, you may want to try blogger that has all the available tools for you to get started with. If you are an advanced user and have already blogged before, try WordPress. Some of the other options available to you are LiveJournal.com, MySpace.com, Yahoo! 360 and so on.

With blogging gaining more popularity around the world, blogging would exist for the next generation too and with competition rising among blog hosts, the road is set for the next generation of blogging. There can be a time when you would be chucked out of a job interview just because you don’t have a blog address. Lets travel and see!