Over the past fifteen years the word “blog” has become part of our daily vocabulary and most of us visit some form of blog on a daily basis. In some cases we’re not even aware of the fact that it’s a blog. Since the emergence of blogs in the late 1990’s their appearance and functions changed and developed.

A Blog (combination of the words “web” and “log”) is a website that contains stories and updates in reverse chronological order–the most recent entries appear at the top of the front page, and you browse backwards to move through the past articles.

A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. Through the sharing of information the blogger builds a relationship with his readers or followers and a virtual community of like minded people with similar interests is cultivated.

The emergence of blogs changed the face &  future of journalism to a large extent. Suddenly anyone with access to a pc, was able to publish their opinions and writings. Most blogging platforms are extremely user friendly and makes it easy for individuals without web design experience to have their blog at no cost whatsoever.

Initially blogs were about personal experiences and maintained by a single person as a form of self expression or commentary on certain topics. These blogs were initially made possible by sites like Open Diary, Live Journal and Blogger. By the late 2000’s the focus shifted from blogs as personal diaries to full blown, edited and moderated digital magazines. “Multi-author blogs” started developing, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited.

As the purpose of blogs shifted through the years, so did their format. Now we also have a scaled down version of the original blog format, the microblog.  Microblogs consist of short commentaries or content, and photos, videos or other multimedia. Twitter and Tumblr are two of the more popular examples of microblogging and are especially useful when it comes to realtime updates of important global events.

If you’re feeling inspired and would like to create a blog for your department, you don’t have to look far. You can host your department’s blog locally on the university’s own WordPress platform. For more information, click here.

[SOURCE: www.howtogeek.com & www.wikipedia.org]