Message

Blogs seem to be about the sharing of ideas and experiences. Blogs have gone from a simple online journal to a world wide sensation, and extremely diverse in style and content matter. The prevailing theme and message of the blog is that ideas, anyones ideas are meant to be shared and discussed. Now that ideas and work are able to be shared at such a fast rate and at such numbers, blogs are all over the place.
What the creators of blogs are trying to show is that your ideas are supposed to be shared with the world wide web.

Bias

Talking about bias while talking about blogging is rather pointless, really.
I mean, a technology who's most basic point is to allow people to publish their opinions and stories online will be nothing but biased.
There is no screening process involved with getting a blog. Anyone and everyone with an internet access and the ability to type can start their own blog.
Bias will be inherent in any blog, whether the blog is about music, politics, movies, the environment or just a journal blog. People write mainly from opinionated stand points, not journalistic ones. The difference between reading about current events from a privately run blog and a newspaper would be that journalists are meant to write just the facts of the events. While bias does have a way to seep into journalism, they at least attempt to remain impartial. With bloggers, there is no pretext of unbiased opinion. For example, this blog is written from a group of liberal minded writers.

While this one is written from a conservative stand point:

Music centered blogs are usually very biased with the kind of music they follow and talk about. Most music blogs focus on one kind of music, indie music blogs are popular, bloggers enjoy finding bands or artists before they become popular.
Aside from the fact that all blogs contain their own bias, blog services contain bias of their own. Blogs promote the idea that every blogger's opinion is interesting enough to be heard.

Photo Blog

Photo blogs are blogs used to showcase a blogger's photography or to to show pictures they found online. This is an example of the second:


"Next on Charles Bronson Kills Hipsters:"


"everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?"


boom

and some examples of the first:
http://blog.petecarr.net/2010/12/02/dinomania-at-world-museum-liverpool/
http://www.deceptivemedia.co.uk/
http://www.myglasseye.net/p/656

Implications of Blogs

At the moment blogs are being used for entertainment, news, opinion and like I said before, really just anything you can think of. From the early days of the internet as we know it today blogs have gone from online journal entries to multi purpose websites used for a wide range of topics and purposes.
While most are either video or text based, I can see blogs becoming much more interactive in the future. Blogs have already become more interactive as they progress. Blogs enable comments on posts, but I can see blogs becoming more of a blogging community as opposed to a single person's opinion. Blogs may become more of a combination of forums and essays. Video blogs may begin to become more of a forum as well, enabling video comments and more interactive options. I can see blogs becoming more of an online community as opposed to single essays.

Some blogs have become so popular their writers have began to make a living off them. Examples:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ The writer of this blog has been able to transform the popularity and well known status of his blog into writing a best selling book.
Blogs like this: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ are a full time job.
Because of the popularity of the site and the amount of hits per day, the woman writing it is paid by the server website to keep her blog. This is the case for a lot of blogs today.
Working online is common, and blogger is becoming a full time job in some cases.
This will probably continue in the future, with more and more blogs being made, and more and more people reading them.

Purposes of Blogs

Now that you know how to use a blog, and where they come from, maybe you are wondering about what purpose blogs tend to serve.
Firstly, most blogs are personal. They can be used for people as online journals to post their experiences online. Many people share their lives with the online community for the sake of sharing ideas, hobbies, links, or videos. They can be political, humorous, about art, or any random subject, really.
http://www.lifeinhighfidelity.blogspot.com/ The blog I write is a mix of music, film, and random topics, if you are looking for an example.
Educational: Many people keep blogs in order to educate people on specific subjects, it could be an environmental blog, a blog about current science, or even a blog about math. As boring as that sounds.
Entertainment: Used by both individuals and companies, or organizations like bands or festivals. Videos, music, and text are often used in these, and they can feature things like downloads or polls. An example would be a band keeping their own blogs to keep their fans informed.
Business: Allows for companies to communicate with their client and customer base. They can serve as both public relations tools and advertising.

But aside from the types of blogs, what was the initial purpose and reason behind the creation of blogs?
The most basic idea behind blogging is the sharing of ideas. With blogs, anyone can set up an online account, and begin publishing their own ideas online. Everyone likes to feel like their opinion is valid, or at least likes to be heard. With blogs you can both publish your ideas online, and get a response from just about anyone who comes across it. You can use them to share ideas with your friends and family, or just to get your ideas out there. While blogs began as online journals, and were a way for people to share their lives, they have evolved into much more than that. With so many different kinds of blogs, we can see how they are for sharing many different kinds of ideas, and even just for entertainment. Their novelty originally was that every day people could feel like their lives were important enough to be shown online. But they are now more of a think tank, really.

Navigating a blog

So at this point you will be asking how to use one of these things.
Reading a blog:
Blog entires will show on the main page of the blog. You can scroll through and see which entry you want to read, and then either read it on the main page, or click on the title to read the whole entry. This is because home pages of blogs will show only a limited amount of the blog, so click on the title to be re directed to the full entry.
Looking for a specific post? On the right hand side of blog sites you can see the blogs archives posted in reverse chronological order. Meaning the most recent entry will be listed at the top. Many bloggers will include things beyond just the text, video or photo's they usually post on the blog. Most blogs list their own favorite blogs or websites to visit, as well as polls or quotes and links off to the side. Just to give their blog a little more personality.

Writing A Blog:
This is pretty straight forward. The dashboard link at the top of the screen will direct you to your blog running options, just click on the giant POSTING or NEW POSTING button, and you will be given a big page to type on. Then you just save what you did (even this is usually not needed, as most blogs auto save every minute or so)
and click on publish post.
This will be different if you want to post a video entry or photo, then you just click on the photo or video options above the type pad and upload it from your hard drive.
Simple stuff, which is why there are so many gung ho bloggers all over the internet.

A Short History of Blogs

The origin of blogs can be traced back to early internet conventions like chat rooms and conversation threads, as well as online conversation forums.From that people began using the internet to keep online journals and share ideas. It is still unclear who began the first blog as we know them today, but it is widely thought to be Justin Hall, who began an official online journal while in College. In 1999 the number of blogs were estimated at around 50, and only 5 years later at 4.1 million. Before blogs were made so popular there was sites like Openjournal (1998) and Livejournal(1999) which made online journal entries easy to do. Original blog software was mostly usable only by people with an understanding of computer code, but with the explosion of online blog hosting sites, they are more accessible to a wider audience, because of how easy it is to run one now.
This site, blogger, was launched in 1999 and can be seen as one of the first official blog sites (as we know them now) to be online.

What is a blog?

Well thats a good question, dear reader. Mainly because this whole blog is for just that. Arent I subtle with my into?
The word blog itself comes from "web log", mashed into web speak, blog.
Simply put, a blog is an online journal of sorts. Its a webpage that allows its operator to post entries on anything they want.
For example: are you an alien? Maybe you are, because for some reason my english teacher really enjoys using you and your alien kind in metaphors. Dont feel special, he uses metaphors a lot. Maybe you are an alien, and you want to write a blog about your space expliots. You could follow the following steps to making your own intergalactic inspired blog:
1- Search for a blog hosting website, using Google or blog directory sites.
2- Click on the register option on its home page with your green alien appendages. Tentacles, in some cases.
3- Enter your email and create a password.
4- You then need to create a name for your blog, and a URL address for it.
Examples: (name) Blogicity (URL) www.blogicity.blogspot.com
5- Customize, choose a layout and a background image or color. These options will pop up as soon as you register.
6- Start blogging, fellow blogger.