If we look up at the one and all knowing - website - Wikipedia then this would be the definition –“A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.” Besides this you will find all the relevant information along with the history, popularity etc., etc.
Leaving out what all they may or may not contain, following are the common observable features of a blog/of blogs
Blog or weblog (if you wish to call it) is more like a personal diary published in news paper and/or kept at a public library which can be viewed and commented by others. But not all of them are good or interesting. Actually most of them can be termed as boring.
As one of my friend puts it, blogs are more like the editorial page of ‘Times of India’.
One thing that is very common in blog (either in a blog or in blogs) is excessive usage of the first person pronoun - “I” – so much so that some people refer to it as, “blogs are a tool for narcissism” It’s too harsh a terminology therefore it’s preferably better to term it as not-so-interesting autobiographies. There are also some that are actually well written, like waiterrant.blogspot.com (latest posts will be available at waiterrant.net)
Then there are blogs that are business and news oriented. These are the blogs that consider themselves as journalistic blogs. It is really a nice place place to start a rumour. And perhaps in terms of funny news they can beat India TV hands down.
There is also interesting section of blogs too; these are blogs on prominent people or groups or on a personality/theme which are quite nice. Remember the most talked about fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com, well it’s our desi (Indian) version of fakestevejobs.blogspot.com but if you follow cricket and IPL you will love the former.
Well it doesn’t end here there are blogs which are more similar to what “I” just did here. Make a commentary on a blog or website and then provide the link. Don’t know if the intention is promotional or sharing generalised opinion!!
Movie review too is a favourite topic among bloggers. Every one is a movie expert. Despite attending a Communication college and making a short fiction film for a project, most people in my batch wouldn’t want to sound like an expert. Whether it is because they are humble or it is because they are honest could be a question in itself, but most bloggers assume themselves to be an expert regardless of their background.
Going ahead, now that recession has become a part of many people’s life, a new category of bloggers have cropped up, these are the ones who write about either a specialized topic or a general topic day-to-day. Then they get Google’s ad sense and earn which is a nice thing. (So if any one goes jobless then, one can try luck with this trick too)
There are those who go a step ahead than Google ad sense. They turn their blogs to books. One such example would be waiterrant.blogspot.com. Well the guy turned his blog into a book or someone else did it for him. There are few others also and a story on this came in ‘The Guardian’.
Maybe blogging is a good thing after all. There was a time when most people wanted to try their hands in movies and they would go to film cities of their respective countries. Guess this is the place where most can try their keyboards (since ‘pen’ wouldn’t work) at typing (same problem with ‘writing’ too) also.
