What is a blog? What do Bloggers do? pt1

After reading Rebecca Blood’s Weblogs: A History and Jill Walker Rettberg’s What is a Blog, I have gained an adequate understanding of the history of blogs and what a blog is and does! From my understanding a blogs history goes somewhat like this, Bloggs were originally used to share content, opinions, ideas, thoughts,etc. There were very few blogs until the idea of blogging became more popular, attracting more people and prompting the creating on Pitas, a free tool to help people create their own weblogs. Then started a trend of blogging that I find relatively similar to today. Link based, sharing of thoughts, opinions and essays. As blogging became more popular, however, according to Blood’s review “during 1999 something else happened” In 1999 blog format shifted to something less about sharing personal thoughts and opinions and more about sharing ones day to day life. This new format of blogging was very much like a journal or a diary, following the daily lives of their authors. Today, we see a mixture of both of the styles.

Trying to brief ‘what is a blog’ I find really difficult. A blog is anything. A blog is a way to share….anything, really, online. Rettburg constantly talks about this idea of “what a blog can be” She stresses this rather than stressing what a blog is and I find that to be a wildly appropriate. As I become more familiar with blogging I find that my preconceived notions about blogging were very narrow compared to what the actual world of blogging encompasses. There are so many categories and variations of blogs that I find it impossible to come up with a definition that accurately reflects all of those differences

There is still a lot that I am learning and as I go through this journey I have absolute confidante that I will come to the end of this class and still not have an adequate enough answer to the question “What is a blog”