pictures of cats

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialised vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

Blog-related terms

A

Autocasting

Automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds.

Audioblog

A blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings sent by mobile phone, sometimes with some short text message added for metadata purposes. (cf. podcasting)

B

Biblioblogosphere

A humorous reference to the world of librarian blogging

Blaudience

The audience, or readership, of a blog

Blawg

A blog focusing on commentary about the law, generally written by a law professor, law student, or lawyer. A portmanteau of "blog" and "law."

Bleg

A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of "blog" and "beg". Also called "Lazyweb."

Blog Carnival

A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.

Blistless or B-listless

When a blogger becomes listless or apathetic about posting. It is also indicative of what will happen to the blogger's mailing list.

Blog client

(weblog client) is software to manage (post, edit) blogs from operating system with no need to launch a web browser. A typical blog client has an editor, a spell-checker and a few more options that simplify content creation and editing.

Blogger

Person who runs a blog. Also blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site. Rarely: weblogger.

Bloggies

One of the most popular blog awards.

Blog Farm

A website constructed from a group of linked weblogs, typically with the main blog aggregating the total content/acting as a gateway.

Blog feed

The XML-based file in which the blog hosting software places a machine-readable version of the blog so that it may be "syndicated" for further distribution on the web. Formats such as RSS and Atom are used to structure the XML file.

Blog hopping

to follow links from one blog entry to another, with related side-trips to various articles, sites, discussion forums, and more.

Blogorrhea

A portmanteau of "blog" and "logorrhea", meaning excessive and/or incoherent talkativeness in a weblog.

Blogosphere

All blogs, or the blogging community. Also called blogistan or, more rarely, blogspace.

Blogroll

A list of blogs. A blogger features a list of his favorite blogs in the sidebar of his blog.

Blog site

The web location (URL) of a blog, which may be either a dedicated domain, a sub-domain, or embedded within a web site.

Blogsite

Sometimes confused with a simple blog or blog site, but a blogsite is a web site which combines blog feeds from a variety of sources, as well as non-blog sources, and adds significant value over the raw blog feeds.

Blogsnob

A person who refuses to respond to comments on their blog from people outside their circle of friends.

Blogstorm

When a large amount of activity, information and opinion erupts around a particular subject or controversy in the blogosphere, it is sometimes called a blogstorm or blog swarm.

Blogstream

A play on the term mainstream that references the alternative news and information network growing up around weblogs and user driven content mechanisms. Can also be used as a play on the phrase "thought-stream", referring to the stream of consciousness as expressed through a weblog.

BlogThis

Pioneered by Blogger.com, BlogThis links on a blog allow the reader to automatically generate a blog entry based on the blog entry he/she is reading, and post to his/her blog.

Bloll

A troll who specialises in blogs. A portmanteau of "blog" and "troll."

Blooger

A blogger who exhibits adolescent tendencies and lacks basic social graces or good manners.

Boreblogging

Writing about personal matters that are barely interesting even to the writer -- preferably in a slightly bent fashion so as to make it fun to read in spite of the subject matter.

C

Catblogging

(traditionally "Friday catblogging") is the practice of posting pictures of cats, in typical cat postures and expressions, on a blog. Sometimes a comment on the cat or the situation shown is provided. Cats had been on web pages already, but "catblogging" as a distinct and defined practice originated on Calpundit.com, by Kevin Drum. He also established Friday as the canonical catblogging day.

Categories

This is a method of organizing blog entries by assigning each entry to a predetermined topic. Each topic (category) will link to a list of entries, all with related content.

Comment spam

Like e-mail spam. Robot “spambots” flood a blog with advertising in the form of bogus comments. A serious problem that requires bloggers and blog platforms to have tools to exclude some users or ban some addresses in comments.

D

Dark Blog

A non-public blog (e.g. behind a firewall)

Celeblog: A blog detailing the lives of movie stars, musicians, and other celebrities, much like tabloid magazines. They often feature embarrasing or revealing papprazzi photos.

F

Flog

A portmanteau of "fake" and "blog". A blog that's ghostwritten by someone, such as in the marketing department.

A Photoblog.

Friday catblogging

See catblogging

G

Glog

A first-person recording of an activity, in which the person doing the recording is a participant in the activity.

GBCW

The "Good Bye Cruel World" diary is when a Kossack decides that DailyKos has become too (fill in the blank) or isn't nearly (fill in the blank) enough for him or her to continue visiting the site.

General chaos ensues in the Comments as other Kossacks agree, disagree, wish the diarist good luck or good riddance.

Gulog

A portmanteau of "gulag" and "blog". Used when a blog is so dismal and depressing, it's as if it were written in a Soviet labour camp.

I

Instalanche

A spike in traffic due to a link from Instapundit, a portmanteau of 'Instapundit' and 'avalanche'. Similar to being Slashdotted.

K

Koufax

an annual quasi-Liberal webblog award.

K-log

aka "knowledge log", a type of blog usually used by knowledge workers and posted on a company intranet for sharing company knowledge.

L

Link Love

linking to a site or blog, usually unsolicited, that you like, enjoy, or find useful.

Log in, blog to, log out

a catchphrase referring to blogger style of activity.

M

Milblog

Term for blogs written by members or veterans of any branch of service - Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. A contraction of military and blog.

Moblog

A portmanteau of "mobile" and "blog". A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages. They are often photoblogs.

Momosphere

Term to encompass blogs written by mothers. A portmanteau of "mom" and "blogosphere".

Multi-blog

Creating, maintaining, and running multiple blogs (2 or more) simultaneously.

Multi-blogger

An individual, business, or institution that runs multiple blogs.

P

Permalink

Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. Use this when you want to link to a post somewhere.

Photoblog

A blog mostly containing photos, posted constantly and chronologically.

Ping

The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.

Plog

Political blog - blog containing mainly politically-oriented material.

Podcasting

Contraction of “iPod” and “broadcasting” (but not for iPods only). Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, for digital players.

RSS aggregator

Software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on his favourite blogs. Also called a reader, or feedreader.

RSS feed

The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.

S

Scribosphere

Term to encompass blogs written by professional and aspiring screenwriters. A portmanteau of "scribe" and "blogosphere".

Shocklog

Weblogs to produce shocking discussions by posting various shocking content.

Spam blog

A blog which is composed of spam. A Spam blog or "any blog whose creator doesn't add any written value."

Slashdotted

The Slashdot effect can hit blogs or other website, and is caused by a major website (usually Slashdot, but also Digg, Metafilter, Boing Boing and others) sending huge amounts of temporary traffic that often slow down the server.

Splog

A term used to refer to a 'spam blog', made popular in 2005 by Mark Cuban

Storyblog

A term used to describe blogs used primarily to publish written stories and poetry used for practice usually by aspiring writers.

T

TrackBack

A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a 'ping' between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

Troll

A commenter whose sole purpose is to attack the views expressed on a blog and incite a flamewar, for example, a liberal going to a conservative blog, or vice versa. The word trolling means literally 'to fish', ie. when the troll fishes for a clashback from the blog writer and/or pro commenters. Many trolls will leave their remarks on multiple posts and continue to visit the blog, sparking spirited debate amongst the blog's regular readers. Trolls' verbosity can range from eloquent to crass, although most trolls probably fall into the latter category. Originally, trolling only meant the custom where someone was commenting just to get a flamewar going, by using exaggarated points of view not held by themselves.

V

Vlog

A video blog; a vlogger is a video blogger (e.g. someone who records himself interviewing people of a certain field).

Vorage

A marriage between the words forage and video defined as "The act of foraging for video on the internet and sharing it with others." Bloggers or vloggers who share streaming or downloaded video content on the web often engage in voraging, scouring search engines and obscure websites to present a curated collection of videos that usually fall within a set theme or editorial perspective.

References

• Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents. Retrieved on 11 January 2006.
• WhatIs.com Blogging Lexicon. Retrieved on 09 May 2006.
• Giant Blogging Terms Glossary. Retrieved on 12 June 2006.
• Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L. A., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2004). Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of weblogs. HICSS-37.. Retrieved on 20 Sept, 2006. See also BROG.
• Blogossary - Blogosphere's Dictionary. Retrieved on 03 October 2006.