*** What is a "blog"?

"Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing record of information. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, politics, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more diverse, presenting links to all manner of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author's daily life and thoughts.

Some blogs are personal blogs, which record a single person’s thoughts, activities and reactions. These can be very influential if the persons who create them are interesting personalities with important or provocative things to say. Personal blogs can be effective means for people to promote themselves and their personal interests; and some people find them to be psychologically fulfilling tools for self-expression.

Blogs also can be used as tools for creating on-line communities of people interested in the same subjects ­ or in each other. On such a “blogsite”, any number of people can describe their thoughts, activities and reactions, and thereby share them with others who participate on the blogsite with them. Since blogs are normally publicly available web sites, some people can simply read them without contributing any thoughts or materials of their own. These are called “lurkers”, and they often outnumber the active “bloggers” who contribute to the blogsite.

Blogs are a useful tool of communication between individuals or groups of people. They can be considered a form of an online discussion (though the conversations can often be hard to follow). They are spaces where comments and thoughts can be added by others enhancing opportunities of social networking.

*** Why Blog?

Using blogs, ideas are brought up on blogs, discussed further by others on their blogs, and distributed to yet more blogs. This is somewhat like a publicly available email discussion. Blogs makes it possible to carry out a conversation in public, with hundreds of thousands of readers.

*** Examples of Blogs

Blogs can be both private and public. Individual or community

1)  Some examples of community blogs include:

-    http://www.wougnet.org/blog (WOUGNET's Blog)

-    http://blogs.bellanet.org (Bellanet's Blog)

-    http://www.theweblogproject.org (The Web Blog Project)

2) Some examples of private blogs are:

-    http://www.rightconversation.com/ (Amy Graham)

-    http://www.fullcirc.com/webog/onfacblog.html (Nancy White)

*** Sources of Blogs

The following sites enable one to establish a blog of their own. This is not a full list, there are many other alternatives:

Wordpress - http://www.wordpress.com
Blogger - http://www.blogger.com
Blogger Talk Forum - http://www.bloggertalk.com

This Tech Tip was compiled by the WOUGNET Technical Support Team. WOUGNET has participated in and conducted training sessions on blogs primarily as a result of our experience as a Focus Network for the Harambee Project that seeks to reinforce African voices through collaborative processes. The Harambee Project is coordinated by Bellanet Africa.