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Blogger

A blogger is a person who keeps a Web log, or blog for short. The idea started sometime in 1998, but really caught on in 2000, to the extent that there are now thousands of bloggers and blogs about. At the beginning, the concept was that a person kept a diary of their explorations of the World Wide Web, making it public for others to inspect and follow up. But as blogging has expanded, that simple idea has been so much modified that it is now difficult to get two bloggers to agree on what the term means. Many blogs are online diaries chronicling activities and events as they happen to the writer, often with no reference to the Web at all. Some writers create only brief entries, while others provide extended essays on life, the universe and everything. There are several sites where people can create accounts and publish their blogs, most notably www.blogger.com, where blogs often have names like The Magnificent Melting Object, or Exploits of a Dwarf Lover.

As the pool of blog writers has grown, perhaps inevitably so have complaints about quality. It’s true that some bloggers seem to feel the need to log every sneeze.

San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 2001

Bloggers add their own foraging notes to links discovered on other weblogs. As a result, some estimate, anything new on the Web will filter through the blog system in some form in about 30 days.

Dallas Morning News, Apr. 2000

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Copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–. All rights reserved.

Page created 24 Mar 2001