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• Afrosphere: The term “afrosphere” was developed by Black bloggers to signify “Blacks on the internet, at Black blogs and websites, working for Black cultural, political and social self-determination, renewal and advancement and sharing generally similar goals, even if they do NOT [necessarily] know one another and [may] have NOT become part of an organization to pursue these goals in unity and collaboration.
• Autocasting: Automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds.
• Audioblog: A blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings sent by mobile phone, sometimes with some short text message added for metadata purposes.
• Audioblogging: Audioblogging is a variant on the blogging trend of online self-publishing, using audio to reach the audience instead of text used by traditional blogs. Audioblogs have similar form as blogs, using post-based entries cataloged by time and date. There is usually a title and brief description, but the bulk of content is in the linked audio file. Usually audioblogs are MP3 format, but occasionally in Ogg Vorbis, AAC, or Macromedia Flash formats. Many audiobloggers are also text bloggers and use both types of posts on their blogs. It can be claimed that if a blog post contains a linked audio file, the weblog is also technically an audioblog. The year 2004 was the tipping point for audioblogging, although it can be argued that audioblogging dates back to 2001 and was initiated by Jish Mukerji on jish.vox. A group of audiobloggers started to unite around the use of RSS enclosures with their audioblog posts and a radio like content format. As media attention grew aroung this new style of audio distribution, a community started to grow. Audioblogs that have come to use RSS are technically known as podcasts.
• Biblioblogosphere: A humorous reference to the world of librarian blogging.
• Blaudience: The audience, or readership, of a blog.
• Blag: A humorous misspelling of ‘blog’.
• Blath: A math oriented blog. A portmanteau of “math” and “blog”.
• Blawg: A blog focusing on commentary about the law, generally written by a law professor, law student, or lawyer. A portmanteau of “law” and “blog”.
• Bleg: A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of “blog” and “beg”. Also called “Lazyweb.”
• Bliki: A bliki (also known as a wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, or bloki), is combination of the two Internet concepts of a blog and wiki. It combines features from both: as with blogs, posts or articles appear in reverse chronological order on the front page, with the most recent one at the top; but editing is done in wiki style, with a version history for each page and special markup tags. As with wikis, the fact that a site is a bliki does not mean that any reader can edit any page; editing permission is at the discretion of the administrator(s).
• Blog Carnival: A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.
• Blistless or B-listless: When a blogger becomes listless or apathetic about posting.
• Blog client: (weblog client) is software to manage (post, edit) blogs from operating system with no need to launch a web browser. A typical blog client has an editor, a spell-checker and a few more options that simplify content creation and editing.
• Blogger: Person who runs a blog. Also blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site. Rarely: weblogger.
• Bloggernacle: Blogs written by and for Mormons (a portmanteau of “blog” and “Tabernacle)”. Generally refers to faithful Mormon bloggers and sometimes refers to a specific grouping of faithful Mormon bloggers.
• Bloggerazzi: Blogs written by blogger stalkers (a portmanteau of “blog” and “paparazzi)”.
• Bloggies: One of the most popular blog awards.
• Blogcritics: Blogcritics is a popular online magazine of news and opinion. The site — a self-proclaimed “sinister cabal of superior writers” — was founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn.
• BloggerCon: BloggerCon is a user-focused conference for the blogger community. BloggerCon I (October 2003) and II (April 2004), were organized by Dave Winer and friends at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society in Cambridge, Mass. Bloggercon III took place in San Francisco (June 2006). According to the Online Journalism Review, “BloggerCon has lots of cooks, but the chief chef is technologist Dave Winer, co-founder of RSS and the patient zero of blogging. BloggerCon exists because Winer wants it to happen.”
• Blog Farm: A website constructed from a group of linked weblogs, typically with the main blog aggregating the total content/acting as a gateway.
• Blog feed: The XML-based file in which the blog hosting software places a machine-readable version of the blog so that it may be “syndicated” for further distribution on the web. Formats such as RSS and Atom are used to structure the XML file.
• Blog Fiction: Blog fiction is a form of fiction writing that uses weblogs to reach its readership. It is a small-scale fringe activity in the world of blogging, and although it has generated some literary critical interest, it remains isolated. It is presented in many forms, from a pretend diary or posted novel to a serialblog.
• BlogHer: BlogHer refers to a group blog and online community, and to an annual blogging conference for women. Three of the 2005 conference organizers, Elisa Camahort, Jory des Jardins, and Lisa Stone, began a company, Blogher LLC, which in 2006 also began a blog ad network. In 2007, BlogHers Act, a political blogging network by and for women, was started by the company.
• Blog hopping: To follow links from one blog entry to another, with related side-trips to various articles, sites, discussion forums, and more.
• Bloglet: A small blog entry, usually one or two sentences long.
• Bloglomerate: A Bloglomerate is one of an increasing number of blogging conglomerates that are slowly transforming grass-roots blogs into corporate media outlets (or at least financially co-dependent groupings of topic-specific blogs in a loosely knit amalgam that survive at least in part on higher consolidated ad rates). Shared corporate-level expenses are another area of savings.
• Blogoneer: A portmanteau of “blog” and “pioneer”, meaning a person who blogs with an expert or pioneering attitude.
• Blogorrhea: A portmanteau of “blog” and “logorrhea”, meaning excessive and/or incoherent talkativeness in a weblog.
• Blogroll: A list of external links located on the homepage of a blog, generally in the blog’s sidebar. It is generally a list of favorite blogs.
• Blogosphere: Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.
• Blog Scraping: Blog scraping, is the process where automated software scans hundreds of thousands of blogs per day, searching for and copying content. The process is sometimes referenced by the name given the software or individuals responsible for the action, “blog scrapers.” “Scraping” essentially stands for copying off a blog that is not owned by the individual initiating the scraping process. If the material is copyrighted it’s considered an infringement of copyright unless there is a license relaxing the copyright. The scraped content is often used on Spam blogs or splogs.
• Blog site: The web location (URL) of a blog, which may be either a dedicated domain, a sub-domain, or embedded within a web site.
• Blogsite: Sometimes confused with a simple blog or blog site, but a blogsite is a web site which combines blog feeds from a variety of sources, as well as non-blog sources, and adds significant value over the raw blog feeds.
• Blogsnob: A person who refuses to respond to comments on their blog from people outside their circle of friends.
• Blogstipation: The state of being unable to think of any topic to blog about, leading to irregular, strained blog entries. A rush of interesting events can clear the block; this is sometimes known as a blenema.
• Blogstorm: When a large amount of activity, information and opinion erupts around a particular subject or controversy in the blogosphere, it is sometimes called a blogstorm or blog swarm.
• Blogstream: A play on the term mainstream that references the alternative news and information network growing up around weblogs and user driven content mechanisms. Can also be used as a play on the phrase “thought-stream”, referring to the stream of consciousness as expressed through a weblog.
• BlogThis: Pioneered by Blogger.com, BlogThis links on a blog allow the reader to automatically generate a blog entry based on the blog entry he/she is reading, and post to their blog.
• Bloll: A troll who specialises in blogs. A portmanteau of “blog” and “troll.”
• Blooger: A blogger who exhibits adolescent tendencies and lacks basic social graces or good manners. A portmanteau of “blog” and “booger.”
• Boreblogging: Writing about personal matters that are barely interesting even to the writer — preferably in a slightly bent fashion so as to make it fun to read in spite of the subject matter.
• Broadcatching: Broadcatching is the downloading of digital content that has been made available over the Internet using RSS syndication. The general idea is to use an automated mechanism to aggregate various web feeds and download content for viewing or presentation purposes.
• BROG: BROG is the acronym for the (We)blog Research on Genre project based in the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. You can see the research papers here: http://www.blogninja.com
• Bugblogging: Blogging about insects.
• Categories: This is a method of organizing blog entries by assigning each entry to a predetermined topic. Each topic (category) will link to a list of entries, all with related content.
• Celeblog: A blog detailing the lives of movie stars, musicians, and other celebrities, much like tabloid magazines. They often feature embarrassing or revealing paparazzi photos.
• Cityblogs: Cityblogs are multiple authored blogs that identify with particular metropolitan areas or geographic regions. They are sometimes referred to as metroblogs, or as part of the metroblogging phenomenon. A Cityblog introduces a given city/region to the world wide web for the benefit of the inhabitants of that particular area. Cityblogs have evolved from traditional single-user blogs. They are unique in that they both want reader interaction and usually contain some other form of media such as photos, videos or audio clips. Cityblogs differ from single-user blogs because they are normally not like a personal diary. Authors may put their opinion into the article, but it is more like a newspaper article than a journal entry. When you try to compare a cityblog to a regular blog you will find that there really isn’t all that much of a difference. The only real differences are the author system and the theme of the content. In reality, all a blog is, is someone writing what is on their mind, which can range from a variety of topics. A cityblog is multiple authors all contributing what is on their minds about what is going on in the city around them. A cityblog truly can be considered the variety section of the local newspaper, but for the technology age. In the world of blogging, a cityblog is its own little piece of that world, and all the little pieces (like countries) make it whole.
• Clix: A person’s circle of online communities.
• Collaborative blog: A blog (usually focused on a single issue or political stripe) on which multiple users enjoy posting permission. Also known as group blog.
• Comment spam: Like e-mail spam. Robot “spambots” flood a blog with advertising in the form of bogus comments. A serious problem that requires bloggers and blog platforms to have tools to exclude some users or ban some addresses in comments. Dark Blog: A non-public blog (e.g. behind a firewall)
• Desktop Blogging Client: An off-line blog management (posting, editing and archiving) tool.
• Dream Journal: A dream journal is a journal in which dream experiences are recorded. A dream journal may be only a record of nightly dreams, or it may also include personal reflections and waking dream experiences. They are also regarded as a useful catalyst for remembering dreams. They are also called as dreamlogs. Dreamjournal.net is a website where you can create and manage your dream journals.
• Edublog: An edublog is a blog written by someone with a stake in education. Examples might include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. The collection of these blogs is called the edublogosphere by some, in keeping with the larger blogosphere, although that label is not necessarily universally agreed upon. Others refer to the community or collection of blogs and bloggers as the edusphere.
• Fake Blog: A fake blog (sometimes shortened to flog or referred to as a flack blog) is a marketing tool designed by a professional advertisement company to promote a product in a fashion one might find on a fan site or in regular blog entries. The purpose of such “flogs” is to inspire viral marketing or create an internet meme which generates traffic and interest in a product disproportionate to the interest a company could generate using the same budget on traditional means of advertising, much the same as astroturfing (a “fake grassroots” campaign). Flogs pretend to be one or more people writing a blog out of pure enjoyment or enlightened self-interest, when in reality the whole blog is a carefully crafted piece of advertising. The person may be real, but usually isn’t. Flog is often applied to corporate blogs or those written by politicians, where the public relations department or aides do the blogging. Generally, a website pretending to be a blog but actually the creation of public relations firms, the mainstream media, or professional political operatives.
• Fashion blogs: Fashion blogs are blogs that cover fashions in clothing and fashion accessories. Fashion blog is solely or primarily dedicated to coverage of fashions in clothing and accessories. There are blogs covering fashion at all levels, from big labels and indie designers to clothing found on the street. Many fashion blogs could also be categorised as shopping blogs as “most of the conversation is shopping advice, liberally laced with consumer recommendations”, and some fashion retailers have now started blogs of their own to promote their products. Blogs that occasionally mention fashion, such as many “personal diaries of teenagers”, are not categorised as fashion blogs. This includes blogs about:
  • runway trends
  • fashion items, e.g. shoes, handbags
  • celebrity fashion
  • street style outfits worn by regular people.
• Fisking: To rebut a blog entry in a line-by-line fashion.
• Glog: A first-person recording of an activity, in which the person doing the recording is a participant in the activity. Probably a portmanteau of “gonzo” and “blog”.
• GBCW: The “Good Bye Cruel World” diary is when a Kossack decides that Daily Kos has become too (fill in the blank) or isn’t nearly (fill in the blank) enough for him or her to continue visiting the site. General chaos ensues in the Comments as other Kossacks agree, disagree, and wish the diarist good luck or good riddance.
• Green Bloggers: Green Bloggers is a group of bloggers who share certain green and environmental values. It was created in September 2005 by Craig Cantin. Members of the Green Bloggers group maintain their own blogs, content from which is aggregated on both the main Green Bloggers website and on various nation-specific sections.
• Gulog: A portmanteau of “gulag” and “blog”. Used when a blog is so dismal and depressing, it’s as if it were written in a Soviet labour camp.
• Hits: Number of users visited is often referred as hits.
• HT: “Hat Tip” An acknowledgment of the source where you found the noteworthy item.
• Instalanche: Sudden and possibly overwhelming increase in traffic to a site after being linked to by the Instapundit.
• Koufax: An annual quasi-Liberal webblog award.
• K-log: aka “knowledge log”, a type of blog usually used by knowledge workers and posted on a company intranet for sharing company knowledge.
• Kos Kid: A term for any one who posts, or reads regularly, the blog Daily Kos. Also known as “Kwazy Kos Kids” after the eccentric nature of some of the members.
• Lazy Web: Making a suggestion to an internet community in the hopes that someone else will do the work.
• Linkback: A Linkback is a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. The three methods (Refback, Trackback, and Pingback) differ in how they accomplish this task. Any of the four terms — Linkback, Trackback, Pingback, or (rarely) Refback — might also refer colloquially to items within a section upon the linked page that display the received notifications, usually along with a reciprocal link; Trackback is used most often for this purpose. Also, the word Trackback is often used colloquially to mean any kind of Linkback.
• Link Blog: A link blog is a blog which focuses on web links. Unlike social bookmarking, it is typically located in a personal website or a regular blog site, and therefore lacks any specific technical features, such as tagging.
• Link Love: Linking to a site or blog, usually unsolicited, that you like, enjoy, or find useful.
• Litblog: Litblog (alternate: lit-blog or literary blog) is a blog that focuses primarily on the topic of literature. There is a community of litblogs in the blogosphere whose authors cover a variety of literary topics. Litbloggers may write about fiction, nonfiction, poetry, the publishing industry, literary journals, literary criticism, and more. They may focus on special genres of literature, including science fiction and mystery. Some litbloggers prefer an objective or formal tone, while others are more conversational. Many litblogs feature reviews of books which may or may not be featured in the mainstream press. Some litblogs feature critiques of reviews in the mainstream press. Interviews with authors are another common feature. Litblogs can also be used as virtual reading groups for focused discussion on a specific piece or pieces of literature, with some litblogs following a particular piece of literature through an entire reading, and others reprinting diaries or letters from authors. Some litblogs are resources for information about the publishing industry, publicity, or writing craft. Many litblogs have one author, but collaborative blogs have many authors, one of whom may serve as the primary author overseeing contributors.
• Log in, blog to, log out: A catchphrase referring to blogger style of activity.
• Linkroll: A list of recently-bookmarked links with brief descriptions, in the sidebar of a blog.
• Liveblog: A blog post updated in real-time about an event in progress.
• Milblog: Term for blogs written by members or veterans of any branch of service – Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. A contraction of military and blog.
• Moblog: A portmanteau of “mobile” and “blog”. A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages. They are often photoblogs.
• Mobile Blogging: Mobile blogging (moblogging) is a form of blogging in which the user publishes blog entries directly to the web from a mobile phone or other mobile device. Mobile blogging is popular among people with camera-enabled cellphones which allow them to either e-mail photos and video that then appear as entries on a web site, or use mobile blogging software to directly publish content to a Web server.
• Momosphere: Term to encompass blogs written by mothers. A portmanteau of “mom” and “blogosphere”.
• MP3 Blog: An MP3 blog is a type of blog in which the creator makes music files, normally in the MP3 format, available for download. They are also known as “musicblogs” or “audioblogs”.
• MSDN Blogs: MSDN Blogs is Microsoft’s blog site where many of its employees blog to a public audience. It has both individual blogs and product or feature-related blogs. The blogs accept comments from the public, and on issues that provoke particular ire, such as Windows Genuine Advantage, blog posts can include many dozens of negative comments – the blog comments are not censored for criticism. Blogs include:
  • IEBlog (Internet Explorer product blog)
  • The Old New Thing (Long-time MS employee Raymond Chen’s personal blog on a variety of technical and non-technical subjects)
  • Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog
  • Virtual PC Guy
  • Windows PowerShell Blog
• Media Ecosysytem: The media ecosystem is a term used to describe the relationship between weblogs and traditional journalism. This relationship can be seen as an ecosystem.
• Multi-blog: Creating, maintaining, and running multiple blogs (2 or more) simultaneously.
• Multi-blogger: An individual, business, or institution that runs multiple blogs.
• Natural Blogarithm: Used to describe the vibe or rhythm of the blogging community. A portmanteau of blog and natural logarithm.
• PENUS: Potentially Exciting News Under Scrutiny. Use this when you have something big that you can’t wait to show to the blogosphere.
• Permalink: A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links. Other types of websites use permanent links, but the term permalink is most common within the blogosphere. Permalink is a portmanteau word made from permanent link. Permalinks are often simply stated so as to be human-readable.
• Phlog: Type of blog utilising the Gopher protocol instead of HTTP.
• Photoblog: A blog mostly containing photos, posted constantly and chronologically.
• Ping: In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.
• Progressive Bloggers: Progressive Bloggers is the name of an affiated group of Canadian bloggers who come from the centre, centre-left and left-wing of the political spectrum. Progressive Bloggers primarily maintain their own blogs, whose content is then aggregated on the main Progressive Bloggers website. Progressive Bloggers was created in May, 2005 by Wayne Chu from the Canadian political website freethought.ca. Open ping servers, like VeriSign’s Weblogs.com, let other web-services subscribe to a list of blogs that have recently pinged them. Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly-updated blogs. Similarly, aggregators use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material. In addition to open ping servers, there are an increasing number of proprietary ping servers that gather information only for their own applications. Most of the major blog search engines operate such ping servers. Unlike open ping servers, proprietary servers with their own subscription applications have no incentive to share their received ping data directly with other servers, which may offer competing services. As these servers do not share their data, bloggers have to ping a large number of individual servers to receive the desired publicity. As a result, bloggers have turned to services such as Ping-o-matic, which pings multiple proprietary ping servers.
• Ping spam: The use of ping servers to direct attention to recent blog posts has led to a rash of ping spam or sping, which attempts to direct readers to web pages that are not, in fact, recent blog posts. Examples: Product vendors who use a weblog-like format to post product ads, meaningless batches of Google keywords, etc. Software vendors, who sell scripts that make automated “weblog postings” every hour around the clock. Creators of ping spam and/or spam blogs may hope to benefit by creating pages to turn up in web searches for popular keywords. Typically, an individual spam post links to some external page that displays Google ads or offers a product for sale.
• Pingback: A Pingback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Some weblog software, such as WordPress and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. Essentially, a Pingback is an XML-RPC request (not to be confused with an ICMP ping) sent from Site A to Site B. However, it also requires a link. When Site B receives the notification signal, it automatically goes back to Site A checking for the existence of a live incoming link. If that link exists, the Pingback is recorded successfully. This makes Pingbacks less prone to spam than Trackbacks.
• Placeblog: Tim Lindgren has used the term “place blogging” to describe weblogs that focus on events and people with a hyperlocal scope.
• Plog: Political blog – blog containing mainly politically-oriented material.
• Podcasting: Contraction of “iPod” and “broadcasting” (but not for iPods only). Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, for digital players.
• Political blog: A political blog is a common type of blog that comments on politics. In liberal democracies the right to criticize the government without interference is considered an important element of free speech. In other jurisdictions bloggers use the uncensored nature of the internet to bypass state controlled news media but as a result may find themselves persecuted. Political blogs often have a clearly stated political bias. Although mainstream media news is often presented as impartial, bloggers believe that it does in many cases have a hidden political agenda. This assertion is supported by the propaganda model. Stating political bias at the outset is therefore seen as being more honest. On the other hand, blogs are often seen as being too anonymous and lacking in factual reliability to be trustworthy. However, they can serve as a soapbox for opinions not represented in mainstream media. The increasing popularity of political blogs by independent commentators has led to their adoption by media companies, politicians and other organisations hoping to be seen to be more accountable to their audiences, but these are often not considered “proper” blogs by the blogging community. Types of political blog: Most political blogs are news driven, and as such political bloggers will link to articles from news web sites, often adding their own comments as well. Some political blogs heavily feature original commentary, with occasional hyperlinks to back up the blogger’s talking points. Many of these blogs comment on whatever interests the author, as befits the blogger’s political leanings, personal knowledge base, and momentary interests. One notable subspecies of political blog is the watch blog, a blog which sets out to criticize what the author considers systematic errors or bias in an online newspaper or news site — or perhaps even by a more popular blogger. These blogs occupy a niche market, although a scandal involving their chosen subject may elevate them to momentary importance.
• Post: An entry written and published to a blog.
• Project Blog: A Project Blog is a type of Weblog customized to record a project, or a deliverable task, with its goal, procedures and status changes. It has “completed” state which puts an intended end to the blog. It is introduced to promote sharing of tacit knowledge by narratively recording projects’ Research and Development process on the Internet. It always good to share information.
• Refback: A Refback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. A Refback is simply the usage of the HTTP referer header to discover incoming links. Whenever a browser traverses an incoming link from Site A (originator) to Site B (receptor) the browser wil send a Referer header indicating the URL from where the user came. Site B might publish a link to Site A after visiting Site A and extracting relevant information from Site A such as the title, meta information, the link text, and so on. Refback only requires Site B to be Refback enabled in order to establish this communication. Refback requires Site A to physically link to Site B. Refback also requires browsers to traverse the links.
• RSS: Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.
• RSS aggregator: Software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on their favourite blogs. Also called a reader, or feedreader.
• RSS feed: The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.
• Roblog: Roblog is a neologism for a blog written by a robot with no human intervention. Roblogs were made possible with a new generation of robots which are capable of uploading images and texts automatically to the Web. The first roblogs to appear, late 2005, were written by AIBO robots, the dog-like robotic pets once manufactured by Sony.
• Scribosphere: Term to encompass blogs written by professional and aspiring screenwriters. A portmanteau of “scribe” and “blogosphere”.
• Shart: An acronym; Stubborn, Hostile And Resentful Troll, the most feared kind. A blog that falls victim to such a troll is said to have been “sharted”. A blogger who vandalises their own page for sympathy is said to have sharted themselves.
• Shocklog: Weblogs to produce shocking discussions by posting various shocking content.
• Social podcasting: Social podcasting is a form of podcasting that allows more than one author to insert content into a podcast. The concept limits contributions from authors invited by the podcast’s owner. Social podcasting differs from standard podcasts as they usually only accept content from a single source or author.
• Spam blog: A blog which is composed of spam. A Spam blog or “any blog whose creator doesn’t add any written value.”
• Slashdotted: The Slashdot effect can hit blogs or other website, and is caused by a major website (usually Slashdot, but also Digg, Metafilter, Boing Boing, Instapundit and others) sending huge amounts of temporary traffic that often slow down the server.
• Sousveillance: Sousveillance as well as inverse surveillance are terms coined by Steve Mann to describe the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity[1], typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet. Inverse surveillance is a proper subset of sousveillance with a particular emphasis on “watchful vigilance from underneath” and a form of surveillance inquiry or legal protection involving the recording, monitoring, study, or analysis of surveillance systems, proponents of surveillance, and possibly also recordings of authority figures and their actions. Inverse surveillance is typically an activity undertaken by those who are generally the subject of surveillance, and may thus be thought of as a form of ethnography or ethnomethodology study (i.e. an analysis of the surveilled from the perspective of a participant in a society under surveillance). Sousveillance typically involves community-based recording from first person perspectives, without necessarily involving any specific political agenda, whereas inverse-surveillance is a form of sousveillance that is typically directed at, or used to collect data to analyze or study, surveillance or its proponents.
• Sping: Sping is short for “spam ping”, and is related to fraudulent pings from blogs using trackbacks, called trackback spam. Pings are messages sent from blog and publishing tools to a centralized network service (a ping server) providing notification of newly published posts or content. Spings, or ping spam, are pings that are sent from spam blogs, or are sometimes multiple pings in a short interval from a legitimate source, often tens or hundreds per minute, due to misconfigured software, or a wish to make the content coming from the source appear fresh. Spings, like spam blogs, are increasingly problematic for the blogging community. Estimates from Weblogs.com and Matt Mullenweg’s Ping-o-Matic! service have put the sping rate — the percentage of pings that are sent from spam blogs — well above 50%. A study commissioned by Ebiquity Group and conducted by the University of Maryland in 2006, confirms that these numbers are around 75%. Since then, growth in sping has slowed such that the portion of pings that are spam has dropped to 53%. The term was popularized by David Sifry from Technorati in his February 2006 State of the Blogosphere report, but was coined initially in September 2005 by a french SEO blogger, Sébastien Billard, in an article titled “Spam 2.0″.
• Splog: A term used to refer to a ‘spam blog’, made popular in 2005 by Mark Cuban.
• Storyblog: Also written as “slog”. A term used to describe blogs used primarily to publish written stories and poetry used for practice usually by aspiring writers.
• Subscribe: The term used when a blogs feed is added to a feed reader like Bloglines or Google. Some blogging platforms have internal subscriptions, this allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog.
• Svithe: A spiritually themed post on a blog not normally focused on spiritual matters. Rhymes with tithe.
• Template: Templates, used on the “back end” of a blog that work together to handle information and present it on a blog.
• Theme: CSS based code that when applied to the templates will result in visual element changes to the blog. The theme, as a whole, is also referred to as a blog design.
• TrackBack: A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.
• Troll: A commenter whose sole purpose is to attack the views expressed on a blog and incite a flamewar, for example, a liberal going to a conservative blog, or vice versa. The word trolling means literally ‘to fish’, ie. when the troll fishes for a clashback from the blog writer and/or pro commenters. Many trolls will leave their remarks on multiple posts and continue to visit the blog, sparking spirited debate amongst the blog’s regular readers. Trolls’ verbosity can range from eloquent to crass, although most trolls probably fall into the latter category. Originally, trolling only meant the custom where someone was commenting just to get a flamewar going, by using exaggarated points of view not held by themselves.
• Vlog: A video blog; a vlogger is a video blogger (e.g. someone who records himself interviewing people of a certain field).
• Vorage: A marriage between the words forage and video defined as “The act of foraging for video on the internet and sharing it with others.” Bloggers or vloggers who share streaming or downloaded video content on the web often engage in voraging, scouring search engines and obscure websites to present a curated collection of videos that usually fall within a set theme or editorial perspective.
• Web Keynoting: Having a blog’s text dictated by a web keynote (also, voice professional). Service provided by Ch4tter.
• Weblog network: A collection of weblogs which are organized and run loosely by a centralized management team. Many weblog networks resemble loose examples of magazine publishing houses. Many blog networks seek economy of scale and scope effects to support their web blog authors. Most blog networks make money via advertising revenue.
• Weborexic: Referring to tiny (width-wise) layouts. Coined by Rhiannon Phillips.

Source: Wikipedia

Moblog is a blend of the words mobile and weblog. A mobile weblog, or Moblog, consists of content posted to the Internet from a mobile or portable device, such as a cellular phone or PDA. Moblogs generally involve technology which allows publishing from a mobile device.

According to Wikipedia:

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with “threads”. Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical “corkboard”. Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.

1983–1990 (Pre-HTTP)

Usenet was the primary serial medium included in the original definition of the World Wide Web. It featured the Moderated Newsgroup which allowed all posting in a newsgroup to be under the control of an individual or small group. Most such newsgroups were simply moderated discussion forums, however, in 1983-84, one exception, named mod.ber, was created, named after and managed by an individual: Brian E. Redman. Regularly, Redman and a few associates posted summaries of interesting postings and threads taking place elsewhere on the net. With its serial journal publishing style, presence on the pre-HTTP web and strong similarity to the common blog form which features links to interesting and cool places on the net chosen by the blogger, mod.ber had many of the characteristics commonly associated with the term “blog”. It ceased operation after approximately 8 months. Brad Templeton calls the newsgroup rec.humor.funny (which he founded) the world’s oldest still existing blog.

1994–2001

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves “escribitionists”. The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community.

Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers, as is Jerry Pournelle. Dave Winer’s Scripting News is also credited with being one of the oldest and longest running weblogs. Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person’s personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters.

Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack’s widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Some of the very earliest bloggers, like Steve Gibson of sCary’s Quakeholio (now Shacknews) and Stephen Heaslip of Blue’s News (still running since 1995 with online archives back to July 1996), evolved from the Quake scene and Carmack’s .plan updates. Steve Gibson was hired to blog full-time by Ritual Entertainment on February 8, 1997, possibly making him the first hired blogger.

Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have “What’s New” or “News” sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One example of a news based “weblog” is the Drudge Report founded by the self-styled maverick reporter Matt Drudge, though apparently Drudge dislikes this classification. Another is the Institute for Public Accuracy which began posting news releases featuring several news-pegged one-paragraph quotes several times a week beginning in 1998. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo.

Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of “blogging”. Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, such as WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services.

The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb (“to blog,” meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”).

After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:

Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers’ blog entries.
Brad Fitzpatrick, a well known blogger started LiveJournal in March 1999.
Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a “news page” on a website, followed by Diaryland in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.
Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003) Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier — specifically permalinks, blogrolls and TrackBacks. This, together with weblog search engines enabled bloggers to track the threads that connected them to others with similar interests.

2001–2004

Several broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan’s AndrewSullivan.com, Ron Gunzburger’s Politics1.com, Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit, Charles Johnson’s Little Green Footballs, and Jerome Armstrong’s MyDD — all blogging primarily on politics (two earlier popular American political blogs were Bob Somerby’s Daily Howler launched in 1998 and Mickey Kaus’ Kausfiles launched in 1999).

By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) increased rapidly. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.

Also in 2002, many blogs focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Senator Lott, at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott’s critics saw these comments as a tacit approval of racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. Though Lott’s comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.

The impact of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media.

Since 2002, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. The Iraq war saw bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that go beyond the traditional left-right divide of the political spectrum. Blogging was established by politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and other issues and cemented blogs’ role as a news source. Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis.

The second Iraq war was the first “blog war” in another way: Iraqi bloggers gained wide readership, and one, Salam Pax, published a book of his blog. Blogs were also created by soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such “warblogs” gave readers new perspectives on the realities of war, as well as often offering different viewpoints from those of official news sources.Blogging was used to draw attention to obscure news sources. For example, bloggers posted links to traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the March 11 attacks.

Bloggers began to provide nearly-instant commentary on televised events, creating a secondary meaning of the word “blogging”: to simultaneously transcribe and editorialize speeches and events shown on television. (For example, “I am blogging Rice’s testimony” means “I am posting my reactions to Condoleezza Rice’s testimony into my blog as I watch her on television.”) Real-time commentary is sometimes referred to as “liveblogging.”

2004–present

In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK’s Labour Party’s MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.

Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called “The blogging of the President,” which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both United States Democratic and Republican Parties’ conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews’ Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary declared “blog” as the word of the year in 2004.

In 2004, Global Voices Online, a site which “aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore” surfaced, bringing to light bloggers from around the world. Today, the site has a relationship with Reuters and is responsible for breaking many global news stories.

Blogs were among the driving forces behind the “Rathergate” scandal, to wit: (television journalist) Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show 60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush’s military service record. Bloggers declared the documents to be forgeries and presented evidence and arguments in support of that view, and CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques. Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs’ acceptance by the mass media, both as a news source and opinion and as means of applying political pressure.

Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette). In counter-point, Hugh Hewitt exemplifies a mass media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in “old media” by being an influential blogger.

Some blogs were an important news source during the December 2004 Tsunami such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, which used SMS text messaging to report from affected areas in Sri Lanka and Southern India. Similarly, during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the aftermath a few blogs which were located in New Orleans, including the Interdictor and Gulfsails were able to maintain power and an Internet connection and disseminate information that was not covered by the Main Stream Media.

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2. Also in June 2006, BBC News launched a weblog for its editors, following other news companies.

In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business people “could not ignore”: Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.

Phlog is a type of daybook, similar to a blog, but run off a Gopher protocol server. These phlogs are typically hosted off home servers running some sort of UNIX operating system, because a user account on the server is usually required to update the content. The gopher protocol provides no way for the user to update the content using the protocol itself as with HTTP POST. There are quite a few phlogs floating around gopherspace but the vast majority are not updated regularly. Due to the limitations of the gopher protocol no commenting is possible unless one implements it using a separate Telnet, HTTP or Email-based interface.