I don’t know if any of you were like me but when I first had this thought I had to stop and think about it for a second. How many of us call ourselves bloggers yet cant even really define what a blog is?
I mean when my friends ask me what a blog is I usually say something like:
- It’s like having a diary but online for everyone to read
- Just a place where I can write my random thoughts and see how many people are bored enough to read them.
- Something I do online to make money
Ok, maybe I carried them on a bit, but do you see where I am coming from? I mean what does BLOG stand for?
So I decided to do a bit of research on the topic. I mean if I want to call myself a blogger then I should know what one is right? So I went to google and entered
‘What does blog stand for?’
And it seems likes it’s not just me who wanted to know what it really meant! After seeing that alot of people were asking the question, I was quite confident that at least one of the search results would have had a decent answer. I WAS WRONG!
Every single answer to the question: ‘What does blog stand for?’ came back with the same result…
It is an abbreviation of Web Log (weB LOG for those of you who are a little slow :D)
I mean seriously I already knew that much, but the answers never seemed to take the question any deeper and the people asking the question seemed satisfied – but not me! I decided to keep researching to find myself a definition now for ‘Web Log’. So as usual I went straight to the source of all knowledge. GOOGLE!
And from my search I found a great way to get multiple definitions of any word. In the Google search box type ‘Define:[insert word here]‘
Anyway using this method here are just a few was a blog (or web log) is defined:
is an online diary used by an author to share information on a particular subject at regular intervals. – www.broadband-guide.org.uk/jargon-buster.html
A web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. - sam.dev.uen.org/core/edtech/glossary.shtml
Also known as a blog and is normally a personal Web Page that allows the public to read a personal journal for an individual. As of late businesses and entrepreneurs have been using them to create paying web page businesses or market their wares and services – www.leadsales.net/adtermsexplained.htm
What I m reading from this is probably the same as a normal person could have worked out by just observing, but here are my thoughts on ‘What does Blog stand for?’ and more importantly ‘What is a blog?’
- Blogs were initially created for the sole purpose of providing an avenue for people to ‘journal’ their thoughts online.
- Initially created for individuals
- Meant to be updated regularly
- But now as humans always do, people have worked out how to make blogging into a form of business as well. Meaning that while some bloggers still blog to share their thoughts a new breed of bloggers are blogging with the intent of building a business.
Those are just my initial thoughts from those definitians and I am not saying that either blogging to journal your thoughts or blogging for money is wrong – I am just trying to define it!
Feel free to shoot my deductions out of the ground as you share what you think a blog is!
Hey did anybody give the correct definition of a blog.If it is there then tel me.Being a blogger I must know it.
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I read a book called do it yourself blogging a while back and it gave the history of the “blog”.
I am paraphrasing since I don’t have the book in front of me, but it said something to the extent that before blogs were blogs they were web logs, and rather than being online diaries they were place people would simply list or log sites that they found useful.
Wow…I can’t touch that one you pretty much covered it! :) I like your site btw…!
Hmmm, it has never crossed my mind to ask what a blog is. Personally I think a blog is a reflection of my thoughts on a certain issue that are open for public discussion.
Yan
I think you’ve totally forgotten the wikipedia.org to get a definition for a blog.
A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual [1], with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Hope this will be useful to (y)our readers…
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Well, for me… blog is like an outlet for some, while it is considered as a business for others. :)
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Blog is become a generaic term for a reflection of one’s passion or hobby…
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Hey Tom, Great post, I have looked up the definition of blog too several months ago. I came up with the one that Dollar Dude came up with from the Wikipedia. I find it surprising that when you do a spell check the word “blog” is underlined and will ask you if you mean bog or several others that you can pick from. I guess Microsoft or Bill Gates didn’t anticipate this one coming down the internet pike. But you would think it would be changed by now. I will get in touch with you Tom in a week or so with some questions for the interview I want to do on you. It will be a very easy interview nothing personal, and just a summary of how/when you first started out blogging and a couple of things like that. No sweat. Thanks for agreeing to it.
Who cares what a blog is, as long as we can make money off it.
@Proxy – now that is the wrong approach to be taking. Most “I blog to make money” blogs fail miserably.
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I think you’ve pretty much “hit the nail on the head” so to speak. It started out as a log – like the system logs on your computer – to journal things and greed has taken over and made a blog into something completely different….look at all that WordPress does and with magazine style themes and whatnot, I’m not sure that calling many of these sites blogs is even accurate.
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