by Brenna Mae

Created on: July 04, 2008   Last Updated: November 10, 2011

The infamous blog is the most common type of website in today's fast-paced internet world. They can be personal, updating mechanisms, or thought provokers. The word "blog" comes from "weblog", which was used years ago as a chronological journal for updates-usually just for companies or organizations. What is a blog today though? How are they used, and what are their potential?

Regular Updates

Blogs, or a website that contains a blog, has one thing that other websites don't have: regular and easy updating. The exact point of a blog is "to blog"-or add new material. If anyone has ever had a website with out a blog, they can see that it can be very hard to get the motivation to update. Opening up an FTP client, finding a file, sorting through a mess of code, and THEN adding the content. Not to mention formatting and design issues during the process. Blogs however are easy to update, and more motivation can be found if the author can go straight to writing the entry.

User-Friendly

Just a few years ago, a person would have to have to be at least a bit tech-savvy in order to get a website running with a full functioning blog. Now however, everyone can do it, with little to no work. With so many user-friendly blogging scripts available for free, anyone who owns a website can automatically install one, along with easy-to-use modules and templates. Even for those who don't have a website, others can maintain a blog with popular websites like Livejournal and Diaryland. Blog modules are also being added to classic website builders for either free or paid hosting.

Community

Blogging does not only allow you do update easily and more efficiently, but it also creates a sense of community. Everyone now can comment on a blog-sharing sympathy, support, opinions and ideas. Most blogging software has a registration component so multiple bloggers can blog on one website. With more than one user adding input to a website, that not only is a sense of community; it is a community. Interactivity is critical for a website to grow and become popular, and blogs are helping pave the way.

Variety and Abundance

Now that anyone can blog, there is an unlimited amount of information on the internet, and millions of article entries being published everyday. If you do a Google search on just about any information, especially debated or opinionated information, chances are you'll get a few blogs just on the first page of the web search. Millions of ideas are now being expressed more easily, simply because there are millions of bloggers online today.

Now that just about everyone can own a blog, the internet has blogs that cover nearly every topic. More opinions, knowledge, projects, and personal experiences are being shared worldwide with a few simple clicks.

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