Of Blogs and Blogging I

I gave a speech sometime last week discussing blogs and spent a good nineteen minutes trying to convince my classmates to pick up blogging. Well, I hate talking, but I managed to spend 9 more minutes than the allotted time.

I’ll spend the next few posts discussing blogs and hopefully educating us on the blogosphere and what makes it tick, using excerpts from my speech. [I’m only doing this because there’s nothing interesting going on now].

While chatting with a friend online last week, he asked me, “I’d like to have a blog but I don’t know where to start.” When I asked him what he knew about blogging, he had no clue — he simply knew most of his classmates had one and didn’t want to be left out. He’s not the only one — I get a lot of questions like that from people who want to start blogging.

This presentation article is for those who don’t blog but are either curious about blogging, or have reservations about it. I’m going to be speaking informing you today about how to carve your own niche for yourself on the Internet through a blog.

We’re going to discuss blogs and blogging in general, the features of a blog, why you should blog, and the problems you’re likely to face while blogging.

Now, what is a blog?

The Encyclopaedia Britannica Online defines a blog or weblog as ‘an online journal where an individual, group, or corporation presents a record of activities.’

Blogs have been in existence since the beginning of the Internet — in fact, Tim Berners-Lee, often credited as the creator of the Internet, created what may have been the first blog.

At first, blogs were used by so-called computer geeks as a communication tool. Blogs evolved, the way computers, the Internet and email did so that you didn’t have to be tech-savvy to have one. It became as simple as login, type and post. Using services like Blogger and WordPress, one can be up and blogging in less than 20 minutes.

The blogosphere which is basically a subset of websites on the Internet has grown tremendously in the past decade. Technorati, a website dedicated to tracking blogs, as of October 2006 put the number of blogs tracked at over 57 million blogs, with over ten thousand getting started everyday, and the total number of blogs on the Internet doubling every 230 days. Of course this is hardly representative of the number of blogs that exist and estimates are as high as 100 million blogs.

If you’re not a blogger I’m sure you’re wondering what all the hype is about blogging and why blogging has replaced e-mail as the hottest fad among the young. According to The Baltimore Sun (the article has been deleted, but it’s available for a fee), among teenagers, blogging is a medium which teens have found helps them in asserting their identity, proclaiming their individuality or even rebelling. It’s not just teens who’ve been caught up by the fad — the owners of most of the blogs I read are between the ages of 20 and 30.

I’ve introduced you to what blogging is about. In my next post we’ll take a look at some of the features of a blog.

Article Index

  1. Part I — Introduction
  2. Part 2 — Features
  3. Part 3 — Blogging basics
  4. Part 4 — Advantages of blogging and problems
  5. Part 5 — Advanced Blogging
  6. Part 6 — Conclusion

Comments

  1. Vera Ezimora says:

    I’M FIRST!!!!!!!!!!

    Considering the fact that most of your readers are already bloggers (like me), don’t you think we should get some kinda compensation for reading this ‘Blogging 4 Dummies’ article you put up? Personally, I think I should be paid o!

    And you’re lucky you talked about a lot of bloggers being between 20 and 30. I for vex ehn! Cause I hardly remember my teen years sef, lol.

    Anyways, I saw the offline message you left me (was it yesterday or the day b4…?). I wasn’t online @ the time. I don’t let me messenger automatically sign me in anymore because I spend too much time reading mails, replying them, chatting, etc. And b4 I know it, I don’t have the stamina to do any real writing.

    Yes, I do realize this comment is rather long, and more like an email, but who cares?

    So Azuka, get back to me on my proposal (of u paying ME 4 reading this article). And feel free to add a little extra since I’m also the 1st 2 leave a comment.

    Bye, YANSH BOY (thought I’d forgotten? In ur dreams!)

  2. nilla says:

    looking forward to the continuation of your blogging tutorial…who knows, I might have a couple of questions (being new and all πŸ™‚ )

  3. Afropinay says:

    Nice nice nice.. Especially on the speech part.. we are getting there:D
    I know when blogging just came out,all I used to do was corporate and business blogging, till i had like 8 different blog accounts for personal stuff and later trimmed it down to 1, then China ruined my blogging fun.
    oh Damn China.
    Azuka.. you need to find a solution for me as regards this comment verification censor oh.. please now..:)

    oh Vera great.. Yansh boy is what I should call him πŸ˜‰

  4. Azuka says:

    Vera
    So because you’re first I shouldn’t hear word? First comers get groundnut, garri and salt.

    Nilla
    Watch out: there’s going to be more…

    Afropinay
    Damn Chinese censorship. I really have no idea — if I were there I’d probably have circumvented it.

    Remember our deal? As your agent I get 70% from all ads.

    And what’s this preoccupation you and Vera have with the Y-word?

    Y—- GIRLS! πŸ˜›

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