Blogging: What You Need to Know to Get Started Prepared by Kristine Visanen, Netaid.org volunteer In case of any queries or requests for tips, please write to techtips@wougnet.org. Blog Posts Are Like Instant Messages to the WebMany blogs are personal, "what's on my mind" type musings. Others are collaborative efforts based on a specific topic or area of mutual interest. Some blogs are for play. Some are for work. Some are both. (Adapted from Blogger.com.) A crucial blog mission is to link to other Web sites — sometimes even other blogs. Most blogs list other blogs the blogger thinks other bloggers should see. Bloggers even joke about "blogrolling" — as in, "you link to my blog and I'll link to yours." The first blog arguably can be attributed to Tim Berners-Lee — if the early World Wide Web, his 1989 invention, can be loosely defined as a blog. Berners-Lee envisioned the Web as a tool to aid collaboration among high-energy physicists by allowing them to link their Web pages together. People outside the field quickly caught on, and the Web revolution was born (along with blogging). The population boom has been driven in part by Web-based services such as Blogger and software such Radio UserLand (radio.userland.com), which allow those with scant Web-publishing know-how to easily create and maintain a blog. How many blogs exist? Estimates range from 300,000 to more than 1 million. However, the biggest jump in the blogger population has arguably been among people who aren't techies, like early bloggers, but experts in other fields. Will you be the next?
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