Blogging

Rebecca Blood – Author of Weblogs: a history and perspective notes the origins of blogging with Jesse James Garrett and Cameron Barrett who compiled a list of the very first weblogs, coming to the grand total of 23 at the beginning of 1999. From the creation of an online directory sprang a community of bloggers who’s numbers began to rise as blogging became more popular. With more and more Weblogs being created, bloggers began to compile their own lists of the weblogs they liked. Brigitte Easton compiled the “most complete listing … available” (Blood 2000) at the time which she based upon a selection criteria that ended up defining a weblog. It was a “site that consist(s) if dated entries”(Blood 2000). By August 1999 the first “free build-your-own-weblog tool was launched” named Pitas followed by the release of Blogger and due to their ease of use, (they eliminated the need for the knowledge of html coding in order to publish on the web) the popularity of blogging skyrocketed (Blood 2000).

This description of early day blogs bears some similar features to the ones listed in Dr Tama Leavers lecture regarding blogging:

Terminology	Leaver (current day viewpoint)	Blood (historical viewpoint)
Blog	“a collection of entries” (Leaver 2011)	“site that consist(s) if dated entries” (Blood 2000)
Blog Post	Individual Entry	A dated entry
Blog Roll	A list of links that “positions a blog as a part of a community” (Leaver 2011)	A list of links to other weblogs that worked as the very basis of the blogging community.

A look at my one of my favourite blog sites Web designer Depot finds that these three criteria are met. The blog is made up of individual dated posts and a list of links to other blogs can be found in the right hand column under the advertisements.

Blood goes on to describe blogs as “link-driven sites” that contain “commentary” from the blogger and as such are referred to as “filters” (Blood 2000) of information on specific topics. Bloggers can compile posts full of links to information on specific topics from all over the web, therefore potentially exposing blog readers to new sources of information, sometimes away from the mainstream. As the internet is an unregulated space, blogs are varied in topic and theme and allow anybody with an internet connection to “contribute” and “participate in media” (Blood 2000). As such the commentaries presented in blogs can be accurate or inaccurate, from a personal viewpoint or a more general one, could compare sources of information on a particular topic, or reveal inconsistencies in the way information is presented to the public (Leaver 2011). This type of online surveillance keeping is what Leaver referred to in the lecture as Gate watching – where bloggers keep news media companies in check by critiquing their journalistic standards (Leaver 2011).

Finally Blood expresses her personal experience with blogging as an empowering one where she discovered her own interests and began to value her own point of view. For Blood the experience of airing her opinions in a public environment enabled her to see the importance of an individual perspective vs. a perspective of traditional conglomerates who disseminate information from a top down model of communication.

Leaver also mentioned a few other elements of current day blogs that I thought were worth remembering:

	(Leaver 2011)
Comments	Invites people participate with the blogger and surrounding community and add to the post
Trackback	A function that notifies a blogger that another blogger has linked to their post. They in turn can link back (links are good for SEO)
Theme	AKA Skin – it’s the design of the blog
Feed	AKA RSS allows for syndication
Podcasts and Video Blogs	Are also considered blogs, today blogs are not just text based

 Blood, R. 2000. weblogs: a history and perspective. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html (accessed 3/1/12).

 Leaver, D. T. 2011. Blogs. http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/lectopia/casterframe.lasso?fid=691872&cnt=true&usr=not-indicated&name=not-indicated (accessed 3/1/12).

  Topic 1.1 What is the Internet. 2011. http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_40430_1%26url%3d (accessed 15/12/11).