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The number of weblogs - or blogs - on the internet is growing rapidly. In the beginning of 1997 there were just a handful of these sites and they mainly consisted of a collection of links, enriched by comments, thoughts and ideas of the writer (the blogger).

At this moment there are all kinds of weblogs and there are millions of them. Together they form the “blogosphere”, the web of blogs. Made you curious? If you want to explore the blogosphere or start a weblog yourself, maybe this article is a useful introduction.

What are weblogs?

A weblog contains messages and reactions on these messages, all arranged chronologically. In many cases there is a calendar so one can look for older messages. Further you will find a list with links to other weblogs (the blogroll). A list with referrers, links from other sites to this weblog, may also be included.

Most blogs are updated very frequently, daily or even several times a day. And as they are often linked to other blogs, remarkable events and news can spread very rapidly - much faster than with the conventional media.

The majority of weblogs are “lifelogs” or personal diaries, maintained by one person and not very frequently visited by others. To the blogger the lack of visits often doesn’t matter. Writing is a nice hobby and it’s fun to publish your very own content on the web. Writing down your own thoughts and ideas also gives you a better insight into your interests.
For writers, journalists, celebrities and anyone who has already raised the attention of an audience, weblogs are a cheap and fast way to reach their public.

There are also weblogs that deal with a specific subject such as Formula 1, cats , political events ore whatever. Relevant news items are often included. And there are of course weblogs based entirely on news items. The Dutch newsweblog Geenstijl.nl is a good example of this category. In business the popularity of weblogs is growing too. Companies can present themselves or their employes or they can sponsor a weblog.
Most weblogs contain only text but there are also photoblogs and blogs that are based on audio and video. Relatively new is the moblog, a blog that is updated with a mobile phone.

Surfing on the blogosphere

Suppose I want to search the blogosphere, would my webbrowser be the best choice? Well, it can do the job, but other search engines will find more actual information for you, such as Feedster (www.feedster.com), Technorati (www.technorati.com) or BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com).

Blogpulse has an interesting option, Trend Search. This valuable tool can tell you how often a certain subject was mentioned in the blogosphere and that’s nice if you’re doing some marketing investment.

When you read many different weblogs, you must visit them frequently to check for new messages. When these messages are offered in a special format, a feed, there are programs by which you can read those feeds without having to visit each weblog. If you want to work with feeds, Feedreader is a handy program. It can be downloaded at www.feedreader.com.

Your own weblog

If you want to start your own weblog, there are two options:
Either you can start your weblog with help of an online blogserver or you can install blogsoftware on your own website.

If you choose the last option, you first need a webserver or an account on a hosting provider. Furthermore you must have technical knowledge of HTML, PHP and MySQL. After installing the blogsoftware, you can organize the database for your messages and build your site.

The advantage of working with your own blogtools is the freedom you have when determining the looks and functionality of your site. There are several opensource weblog programs, such as Pivot (www.pivotlog.net), Textpattern (www.textpattern.com) and WordPress (wordpress.org).

As already mentioned, you can also open an account on an online blogserver. The server creates a weblog for you and offers templates to design your blog. Thus it’s easy to start your own weblog without much technical knowledge. Often you can even include photos or video in your messages.
If you take the restrictions in design and possibilities for granted, an online blogserver offers you an easy way to start your blog within minutes. Free online blogservers are:

Blogger (www.blogger.com), MSN Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com), Web-log.nl (http://web-log.nl) and the free lite-version of MovableType (www.sixapart.com/movabletype).

If you want to know more about weblogs:
In the year 2000 Rebecca Blood has written a book on blogging. More info can be found at: (www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html).

The next site offers short info and many links: (http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/).

And for the Dutch readers: Rogier Mostert has written a book “Weblogs” ISBN 90-430-1127-4
(www.mostert.org/boek/weblogs).

This article is based on information in Computer Totaal, nr.11, November 2005

This article was originally written to inform the visitors of our downloadsites, http://www.hotdownloads.org and http://www.fast64.com Feel free to visit them as many more articles, videoclips and video tutorials will follow.

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From some years back weblogs (or simply “blogs”) have become one of the most popular ways of online publishing and communication. While still most of them have no commercial purpose, blogs as a makerting tool (or even as a business by itself) are increasing its presence on the Internet.

WHAT ARE BLOGS?

Though there are different approaches to weblogs, they can be defined as web sites where users post entries (news, articles…), updated frequently and normally reflecting the thoughts of the blog’s creator. Those entries (posts) are typically listed in reverse chronological order (the most recent entry on the top).

Most blogs allow visitors to leave their own comments on the diverse entries or even references from other blogs (trackbacks). This communication between different blogs and bloggers is one of the main factors involved in the fast growth of the so-called “blogosphere” (the whole community of blogs) and its current influence.

HOW A BLOG CAN HELP YOU?

Blogs are constantly creating new business opportunities. While some time ago blogs were almost an exclusive territory for non-professional bloggers sharing their thoughts, experiences and ideas, currently small and large business have a wide presence in the blogging world. There are a number of potential benefits of adding a blog as part of your marketing strategy or as a business model:

• Blogs spread information: Blogs allow you to publish information instantly and frequently, and the conversational nature of blogs will help you spread that published information. Not only your visitors will read it, but also other blogs will reference your content through reviews, news, comments… and will link to your site, allowing other Internet users to access that given information. In addition, your blog can capture the attention of the media, which frequently uses the blogs for source material.
• Blogs give you feedback: Most blogs allow readers to comment on your posts or link to them (and notify your site) on their own blogs. This is an automated mechanism that provides you instant feedback on any issue. You can know what your readers think of you (or your product/service/company) almost in real time.
• Blogs build you a reputation: Always you provide useful and honest content, a business blog can help position you as an expert in your niche. Blogs can be considered as a platform for expressing your knowledge, expertise and experience, so they are a powerful tool for building you a solid reputation.
• Blogs are marketing tools: Blogs are a useful and low-cost marketing tool as they improve the awareness of your product/service/company and strengthen the loyalty of your customers (readers). The word-of-mouth will provide you a way into audiences that couldn’t be reached efficiently in any other way.
• Blogs are an easy content management system: The ease of use of blogs as a content management system (CMS) will allow you to forget the programming and the design of your web site and will also help you reduce costs. You can create your blog using free blog hosting services like Blogger or run free software like Wordpress on your own web hosting (preferable for business blogs). In both cases you can adapt the appearance of your blog through free professional-looking templates (themes). This makes creating and updating web sites faster, easier and cheaper then ever.
• Blogs are search engine traffic generators: Lastly search engines have been driving their efforts to reward rich-content sites, due to the great amount of poor-content sites built with the only purpose of generating revenue with advertising. As blogs are generally based on valuable and original content, they are specially appealing to search engines.

  The linking structure inherent in blogs is another determinant in the equation. As other blogs reference your web site articles, they will link to them. Moreover, comments and trackbacks frequently include a link back to the blogger’s site. Because incoming links are one of the most important ranking factors in major search engines, it’s obvious that blogs are great platforms to generate search engine traffic.

Original article published by Javier Garc