Blogging is an Internet phenomenon that is so prevalent the noun blog (and its bloggers) is also a verb, to blog. A blog is somewhere between an online diary, a self-published magazine and/or an informational guide website for the web or otherwise. The term itself spread like wildfire as the most notable website blogger.com gained momentum. Blogger is used by thousands of people to provide a speedy online publishing service. The content of these blogs is completely up to the blogger, the person running the blog. It is not necessary to be a technical genius or to have a degree in journalism in order to get your site up and running. The services that websites such as blogger.com make it fast and easy for the average Internet user. Bloggers publish most often personal thoughts or observations, often comical or clever in nature. The genre of blogs falls somewhere between a column you would read in a magazine and a radio show you would listen to. Blogs are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The frequency that the blogger posts columns is also completely up to the individual.

Blogs are also called weblogs or web logs. Web log has the additional definition of being a server's log files, which makes the term 'blog' less confusing and more convenient.

Blogging has not yet lived up to its full potential as it is a relatively new form of self-publishing and somewhat of a new and unique phenomenon.

Here is how some people have defined blogging:

"If we look beneath the content of weblogs, we can observe the common ground all bloggers share -- the format. The weblog format provides a framework for our universal blog experiences, enabling the social interactions we associate with blogging...These tools spit out our varied content in the same format -- archives, permalinks, time stamps, and date headers." (Meg Hourihan)

Halley Suitt provides a humorous and accurate description of blogs: "last place on earth to tell the truth, watching brains at work, a love letter, a diary, an open head - for the reader's convenience."

"It harnesses the web's real genius - its ability to empower anyone to do what only a few in the past could genuinely pull off. In that sense, blogging is the first journalistic model that actually harnesses rather than merely exploits the true democratic nature of the web. It's a new medium finally finding a unique voice." (Andrew Sullivan)

"A blog is defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often accompanied by links to other blogs that the site's editor visits on a regular basis. Think of a blog as one person's public diary or suggestion list. Early blogs were started by Web enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on the Internet. They added commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another's blogs. A community culture took hold." (Jay Cross)

Blogging uses the Internet's unique access to interactive, social, democratic and personalized forms of information. The blog's format is consistent wherever you may read and find them on the internet. The owner of the blog will always have reverse chronological listings of the entries/diary journals, links, archives, time stamps and sometimes photos or videos to accompany the content.