Blogs

What is a Blog?

Blogs are all the craze, all the kids have 'em.



Blog: A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.



Blogs are what got Dan Rather to resign, got Maza to remove a blog because its sole putpose was to promote a car, and they're now helping Tsunami victims in South-East Asia. Blogs are changing the face of journalism and marketing alike. Marketers are finding that the most important factor in marketing, word of mouth, is now attainable via key bloggers. But getting those key bloggers to buy into what these marketers want them to push is a challenging proposition.



Forums, Wikis and Blogs have laid some of the groundwork (even though they've grown in parallel) for much of today's development in apis. The idea of users giving feedback in the form of applications isn't that much different than users giving feedback in the form of posts or threads. The main difference is that developers of applications that implement apis are in essence conducting research & development for the api owners and the cost of the R&D is the cost of maintining the api. Not a bad price to pay for conducting R&D and user test cases while building brand loyalty all at the same time.