Web logs. Blogs. Online journals. These terms all relate to one activity, and that is blogging. The use of service online to record your thoughts and anything else you might want to share with the world in an online forum. This forum takes the form of a website that is the sub site of whichever service you decide to use. There are many different services out there. After a post by fellow blogcritic Tan the Man, I started thinking of these sites.
The most popular of the online blogging sites is Blogger which is run by Google, and for online journaling sites, one popular one is Live journal. Both have different features, and a lot of others sites use the ground work laid out by live journal to create their own sites with similar services, such as Greatest journal and Dead Journal.
Blogging and journaling although similar are different because of the way the sites run. Blogs are public and have limited features. The only thing you can really customize on a blog is your blog layout. You can add things to your sidebar, but that is it. On blogger, your entries are totally public.
Sites that run off of live journal’s coding have much more in the way of features to offer. On live journal, you have the ability to add people to a friends list and read them off of a friends page. This makes it easier than having to hop from blog to blog and see if anyone has updated. When they update, it is right there on your friends page. With a friends page you also have the ability to lock your entries so those you want to see it can, and no one else. There are also other little features such as the ability to use picture icons to represent yourself on the site.
I have been journaling online since July of 2001. I started my first journal on live journal at the urging of some new acquaintances. I had no idea what online journaling was at the time. The only type journal I had up to this point was a pen and paper journal. I learned to quickly fall in love with the site. After a couple years there I moved to another live journal based site called Greatest journal because it offered more of the features that live journal charged you for at no cost.
Article comments
1 - Joe
Fabulous article, as always Ms. Blogcritic of the Day!
I have officially broken up with all LJ-related journaling websites myself and moved on into blog land and I couldn't be happier.
2 - alpha
You use your Blogger blog well -- as is your article.
Presently I am using iBlog with .Mac as well as a Blogspot site. IBlog got me started on the whole thing. iBlog is better as a photoblog. Blogger is getting better and is free.
Why do I bother? I like to write things out and originally thought that I could do a service for the foreign community where we live. It has only brought problems there and I am beginning to ignore it. I am obviously not a travel blog writer. I really don't know where it is going... sometimes not even why.
Yesterday a fruitcake emailed me that he would "deconstruct" my blog because...I never understood why. He didn't like a BC post or me or the blog. The point being that the "blogosphere" is not benign and has its vicious people, repercussions for ill chosen words, legal problems, and an opening for all of these to enter the life you opened to so many by blogging. There are dangers.
It makes blogging and living very much alike.
3 - Smelvis
Nice comments!
While there are huge popular blogs living and breathing out there, these free blogs give us average folk a way to record thoughts and observations and communicate with close friends & family. My brother is heading to Iraq next week and has already set up his Blogger blog to keep us informed.
4 - Tan The Man
Nice article and thanks for the shout-out.
5 - Gina
You're welcome, Tan. It was your article that made me think about it, so I gave credit where it was due.
Blogs and online journals can cause problems. I've seen simple entries end friendships. I've seen others use their entries to mock others. This has mostly happened on the live journal based sites, but I can see it happening on Blogger too.
I haven't had any negative reaction to my own blog yet. I'm hoping it stays that way. Thanks for the compliments on my blog.
6 - Mark Sahm
I don't think the blog world is really crazy. Hypothetically, if we lived in a cartoon world and you saw the thought balloons above everyone's heads, the blog world would suddenly seem like a G-Rated movie in juxtaposition.
The world itself is much much worse, where even "good" people are thinking dirty and evil thoughts, but never speaking or acting upon them. The detected "craziness" within the blogosphere is merely a healthy portion of those thoughts that have become public.
I haven't had any negative reactions to my writings either (yet), but then even if I did, who cares? No matter what you write, there will always be someone who hates it. It's the law of balances.
7 - Minimus
I don't give a rats testical if i make friends blogging or not. I prefer to do that in real life. What i like to blog for is to get things off my chest and being able to write things with the knowledge that maybe some random person will read it!
It just nice to know to that you can publish something you've written with such ease and that someone will probably read it.
8 - jward
I've been following online discussions related to blogging, and the air seems to be very heavy among those involved. To me, the difference between journaling and blogging lies in the intent of the writer. Bloggers seem to place a high value on size of reasership, trackbacks, number of comments, etc.. I think the people who journal do so for self therapy, and to communicate with friends and relatives--i.e. it's intended to be a more private form of expression, even if it is left open for the world to see.
I started dabbling with writing some journal entries on my unfinished family web. I enjoy documenting certain activities for future reference, with no expectation that others will read it, or would care to read it.
Your article seems to echo my personal observations, so i thought I'd post a note to confirm your assessment.