BLOGS AND WIKIS

Blogs and Wikis

Blogs and Wikis

Blogs

Blogs are one of the easiest ways to set up a web page on the internet, taking a novice only a few minutes. This ease of set-up was incorporated by Blogger in 1999, and Blogger was bought out by Google in 2003, dramatically furthering its use. Since that time a number of other companies have been specializing in blog and blog-like products. This ease of set-up and use has made blogs the fastest growing area of the web, with a new blog created, on average, every second of every day. Compare this to the fact that in March 2005, there were only around two million blogs worldwide. According to the most recent Pew Internet Survey, blog use now accounts for around 27 percent of all internet use.

All Companies Should Establish Their Own Blogs

With the growth in popularity of blogs has come the equally rapid and unwelcome growth of blog spam, known as splogs. This information “noise” either takes the form of junk comments, which for large and popular blogs often necessitates turning off the comment feature, or wholly junk blogs. Splogging is a real and growing problem, crowding the information byways with useless data that is designed to drive readers towards commercial sites. Blog engines have responded with various tactics, ranging from requiring non-machine readable verification before a comment can be posted to platform-specific filtering software such as WordPress's Spam Karma.

Blog influence

Blogs continue to exercise their influence in the “real” world, with some recent examples being the resignations of Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader and Dan Rather as CBS news anchor, as well as continued pressure to investigate WMD claims and Iraq War civilian casualties - issues picked up by blog writers and readers after being dropped or ignored by mainstream news ...