Group 3:Poon, Rowland, Singh, Van Kampen, Wang

So what exactly is a blog?
A blog is an extraordinary resource to voice your opinion online. It is a great place to share and collect things which be appealing to you. A blog may be of any length or topic posted on the internet by any users based on various topics. The name “Blogging” was derived from the name web log. The general purpose of a blog is to voice opinion or feelings on a free platform in which mass audiences may read at any time. Blogging can be useful for communicating a large amount of information to all your friends simultaneously. It is also common for "Blogger's" to use blogs as a way to organize their own thoughts. So how do blogs differentiate from typical websites?

So how do blogs differentiate from typical websites?

- Content is typically organized in a chronological order; often you will see the most recently dated blogs at the top.

- Content is updated regularly depending on the popularity of the blog

- Virtually anyone has the ability to leave a comment based on a blog

- Can consist of "Pingbacks" and/or "Trackbacks" which are ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without the need of visiting the blog

Why Do People Blog?
Blogging has much to offer many people, a person may decide to start a web log for any number of reasons. Some of these reasons may be the following:

1) Voice opinion: The most common reason for someone to start a blog is too voice an opinion or feeling. This is a good reason to start a blog because it isn't requiring someone to have to listen to you talk about something they may not be intrested in, also the blogger doesn't have to repeat themselves to everyone individually.

2) To make a online diary: Instead of writing the traditional diary in a book, generation Y has chosen to make their diary's online and public. Making their diary online can update their friends and family on what the blogger has been doing recently, in an easily updateable format. This is a very unintrusive way of sharing unimportant information.

3) Hobby: Some may choose to blog as a hobby to kill time. Blogging can be competitive and may be awarded with glorification or a "bloggy" award. With a viewer count on the bloggers webpage, there is incentive to make a great blog to compete with fellow bloggers.

4) Buisness: Blogs can be used professionally as well as casually. Radio stations, workplaces, news stations and other groups of people will use blogs to communicate important information which couid be related to work, or could just be important news.

Types of Blogs
Personal blogs: Personal blogs are the most traditional type of blog; this is also known as a micro blog where extremely detailed blogging seeks to capture a moment in time. These kinds of blogs are common on web pages such as twitter, where blogger are able to share thoughts and feelings.

Corporate blog: corporate blogs are mainly used in business or private purposes, which is used for marketing, branding, and or public relations. This is a great way to increase communication and culture in a corporation

Question Blog: If one would like to talk about a common problem or question they are looking to solve, then a question blog is a great way to communicate answers to these questions, which respondents may be very opinionated on.

Other Blog types: Other blog types may include food blogs, entertainment blogs, fashion blogs, music blogs, and humorous blogs, asian blogs, african blogs, latin american blog, canadian blog, photography blog, art and crafts blog, gossip blog, and the list goes on.

Blogging community
Among the blogging community are blogospheres which is a form of websites that include many blogs not necessarily of the same topic. A useful tool for checking out the blogging community'is a blog search engine, which is a vital tool for finding information on specific topics. Some examples of blog search engines are http://www.bloglines.com, http://www.blogscope.com or http://www.technorati.com which is the most popular. An interesting kind of blog is a fake blog, in which companies create a fake web log to advertise and promote products from there company, this is a great way to make blogging profitable. This type of blog is better known as a “Flog”

Blogging popularity
Blogging has boomed recently, specifically as of 1998. Although the first blog was created somewhere in the 1990’s; blogging has become mainstream recently and will continue to grow over the next few decades. This boom in popularity appears to originate from the creation of the website http://www.webdiary.com, web diary increased peoples interest in the idea of making online web logs. Another aspect that makes blogging addicting is that blogs can post how many views it has attracted, this is a way of creating competition between blogs. Since the blog boom, blogs have hit main stream and have been utilized by news stations, radio stations, and businesses as well as many others.

Pros and Cons to Blogging
Pros

Some pros to blogging include ease of access, convenience of use, and generally are free to use. Also blogging a great way to express one’s self while staying completely anonymous if one chooses so. Blogging has a great widespread source of many kinds of information, both useful and entertaining. Various topics of blogs can range from just for fun, to competitively glorifying an issue. Also something you may not know, blogs have many health benefits, research shows that blogging may improve memory and sleep, boost immune cell activity and reduce viral load in AIDS patients, it even speeds healing after surgery.

Cons

Blogging has many privacy issues such as, defamation of character, which can cause controversy which may lead to lawsuits. Also in the employment process, the employer can easily access information that you may not wish to disclose. There has been numerous terminations of employment due to the exploitation of internet to find relatively private information. Just like with anything blogging can be harmful if dependency occurs which will impede the everyday balanced lifestyle we live.

Fun facts
Blogging has a lot of intresting figures attached to its name, for example an estimated 175,000 blogs are created every day. Blogging is expanding so rapidly that the blogosphere double every 200 days. Even though there are 18.6 blog postings every second, about roughly 1% of blogs are actually viewed by other users in the blogs existence. 80% of blogs are abandoned within a month of there creation. Blogs generally have the lifespan of 2-3 weeks, which is about the lifespan of a fruit fly.

Bloggies


Bloggies.com is a special kind of blogosphere which awards top blogs with recognition and 20.09 dollars, for each genre of blog. Genres may range from entertainment blogs, humorous blogs, African blogs, food blogs, fashion blogs, micro blogs, technology blogs, and many, many, more.

Bloggies.coms bloggy award is a great incentive to get people to create their own blogs and share them with the internet community.