Blogs and Twitter

I think blogs are fantastic. If you think blogs are just the ramblings of some self-absorbed teens, then... well, you're partially right. But you're not completely right. There are blogs out there on any topic you can think of and many of them are well written and very informative about their topics. Some of my favorite blogs are listed below and I read their posts almost daily...

• Clients from Hell
• Not Always Right
• Lifehacker
• Dumb Little Man
• CSS Tricks
• A List Apart
• Business Insider
• The Consumerist

A blog is simply a type of web site, and probably the most popular type. Every notable web site out there is either a blog or runs a blog and you can't read the newspaper or watch news without reading/hearing about a reference to a blog (or Twitter).

A blog is short for web log, and is made up of posts that are dated and displayed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top. A reader can submit comments to a blog post and this helps blogs become an asynchronous communication tool.

A person who blogs is a blogger. A blogger writes posts for their blog on a regular basis. Sometimes they post a couple per week and sometimes they post many times per day. Some blogs have multiple writers/bloggers so not all of the posts are written by the same person.

There are two major blogging services: Blogger (capital B) and Wordpress. Blogger is owned by Google. Both of these services have lots of the same features and allow you to create very cool, customized blogs. Wordpress is a bit more popular for professional bloggers.

Twitter is best described as a micro-blog. It works almost identical to a blog but the posts are limited to 140 characters and smart phones and cell phones are common interaction tools. A post in a Twitter account/feed is called a tweet. And, people who regularly read the tweets of a particular person are called followers.