Blogging by UnderstandMedia.com Staff
Before the 1990s, the world consisted of one-way media formats. Newspapers told us the stories they felt were important, cut out information they felt to be irrelevant, and gave us a very limited view of the world. Radio brought us news, talk, and music entertainment that someone else thought we would find interesting or compelling. Television brought us moving images from around the world, effectively expanding our world while at the same time narrowing our point of view to the size of a 20-inch screen.
Today we have a type of media that doesn’t just let us consume news and information the way we used to, but it also lets us create our own news and information to share with the rest of the world. The World Wide Web brought us people who built their own web pages, posting everything from text and images, to sounds and video. But these web pages were difficult to create and maintain at first, and they weren’t very interactive.
In the early 2000s, we saw the rise of two-way Internet media that would revolutionize the way we communicate with each other. Blogs (short for web logs) not only allow us to post information we’ve created to the Internet, but it allows us to do it in a very simple, non-technical way. This new method of communication also allows others to contribute to the information by adding the ability to respond to other people’s blog posts.
All types of people create blogs, and so the content of these blogs varies greatly. There are blogs about business, news, entertainment, politics, knitting, dirt biking, pregnancy, and just about any other topic you can think of. Nearly any topic you could be interested in will surely have a blog dedicated to it somewhere on the Internet.
So now we can not only tell the world what we feel about a particular topic, but the world can respond with their own opinions.
At this point, a word of warning is in order. Because anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can create a blog, you not only have more information created about every topic imaginable, but you also have more authors creating that information. Because most people writing blogs are not professional writers or reporters, much of the information contained in blogs should be considered carefully. Always consider the information you read on blogs to be of the author’s own personal point of view or opinion. Don’t necessarily take something as fact because someone said was so on his or her blog.
Now that we know what a blog is, how do you go about finding a blog that matches your interests, or even starting your own blog? There are many websites that offer a free blog to anyone who wants one. These sites also maintain a list of all the blogs they host, so you can search for blogs that share your interests, or start your own.
Blog Sites
Before we continue, here are some quick websites that host blogs and let you create your own.
Live Journal – http://www.livejournal.com - This is one of the oldest blogging sites on the Internet. From here you can create a blog (called a journal at this site), have your friends create their own blogs, and then create a community of journals. Each person who is a part of your community can read and comment on your blog. You can choose to make your blog “friends only”, in which case only those in your community can read and reply to your posts, or “public”, in which case anyone on the internet can read and reply to your posts.
Blogger – http://www.blogger.com - This site allows you to quickly and easily create a blog. It isn’t as community focused as Live Journal, but it allows users to create a subject-specific blog quickly and easily. Create a blog and start posting your ideas within a few minutes. Users can easily post pictures, videos, sound clips, and text into a single post. The Blogger site allows people to quickly search for blogs by interests, keywords, or topic.
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com - This is more of a community for young people that includes blogs. MySpace is certainly a very popular site, but it's worth nothing that there is a lot of advertising on this site, and it's own by News Corp., which also owns Fox (20th Century Fox, Fox News, etc.).
Anatomy of a blog entry
Blog entries are very similar to traditional journal entries. While some blog sites call entries “posts”, some sites such as Live Journal choose to retain the connection to the paper version and keep the term “entry”. Whatever you call it, a blog post/entry allows the user to use internet technologies and customs to bring their ideas to the screen.
Similar to an e-mail, a post contains a subject line indicating the post’s topic, followed by the main body of the entry. Just like an e-mail, a post can contain images, text, video, and sound bites. Since the web offers the ability to use HTML tags as well, posts can be formatted to look almost like a webpage. Here are some common HTML tags that can be used to add webpage-like formatting to your blog.
A link to another site: <a href=http://www.siteaddress.com>Site Title</a>
Show an image: <img src=http://www.picture.com/photo.jpg>
Make text bold (place on either end of the bold text): <b>Bold Text</b>
Make text really large:
<h1>Really Big Text</h1>
Force a line break between elements: <br>
Most blogs let you attach tags to your posts. For example, if your blog post is about Christmas, you can create tags called “Christmas” and “Holidays”. When users search your posts by keywords that include the tags, the Christmas post will appear. This is a great way of organizing your posts by topic.
Sites like Live Journal let you indicate your mood, the music you’re currently listening to, and more.
At the bottom of the post is a comment section that lets other people post comments to your entry. You can usually restrict comments by groups of people, or just let anyone post comments. You can also moderate the comments, deleting the ones you don’t want to have. This is useful if someone posts something offensive and you want to get rid of it.
Most blogs contain an RSS feed. This is just a file that automatically updates when your blog is updated with a new entry. Your friends and fans can subscribe to the RSS feed using Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and be notified automatically when you have posted something new on your blog.
One of the great things about blogs is that other can link to your blog when they think you’ve written something fantastic. They can put the link on their own blog, or even on another webpage. This is done using a blog tool called a permalink. Permalinks are just permanent links to that particular blog entry. This makes it easier for people to find and link to a particular blog entry.
Making money with blogs
Although most people who have blogs do it for fun, it is possible to make money using a blog. The most popular way to make money using a blog is to insert ads into your blog. When one of your visitors clicks on the ad, you make money. This can be done in one of two ways. The first way is to have someone pay you directly for his or her ad on your blog. It can sometimes be difficult to find someone willing to advertise on your site. The second way, and the easier way, is to use a service like Google AdSense.
Google’s AdSense service allows you to insert ads into your blog without the need to find your own advertisers. Just insert their HTML into your blog, and they do the rest. The service has it’s own set of advertisers, and they try to match the advertisement with your site’s content. So if your blog is about basketball, your ads will probably be about basketball as well, but it could also be about sports in general.
Legal issues with blogs
Most of the time, you won’t have to worry about any legal issues with your blog. If you write something that’s your own opinion, or post your own pictures, you should have no problems.
The legal issues arise when you want to post something to your blog written or photographed by someone else. Copyright laws typically prohibit you from posting something created by someone else without first asking permission. This is also true when posting music or videos. Although some sites and services have copyrighted material on their sites, they are usually licensed (and have permission), or they are doing it illegally.
When you consider posting something you didn’t create to your blog, ask yourself a couple of questions. First, do I have permission to use this from the person who created it? And second, if I don’t have permission, could I get in trouble because I posted this to my blog?
There are some exceptions to this rule, however. If you post a link to something created by someone else, and you’re not actually hosting (have the files on your own server) the files yourself, then you’re usually in the clear, even if the person you’re linking to is in violation. For example, posting a picture of a famous celebrity from a magazine to your blog is probably not OK. But placing a link in your blog to that picture on the magazine’s website is probably OK.
