Weblog

A weblog or blog is a website that is regularly updated, sometimes several times a day. The visitor to a weblog sees the most recent contributions on the front page. Usually this concerns text but it can also include photos, video or audio contributions. Weblogs offer the readers the chance to, sometimes anonymously, post reactions to messages.

Some people use a blog to set out their own thoughts, while others want to reach an influential, world-wide audience of thousands. After a while, many weblogs attract a fixed audience, ranging from ten or twenty visitors to thousands per day, who regularly visit to see if anything new has appeared. On top of this, webloggers themselves often read many other, world-wide weblogs and news can spread incredibly quickly via this medium. Weblogs, therefore, played an important role when the Twin Towers in New York were attacked. While traditional news sites rapidly became unusable due to the huge amount of interest, webloggers were reporting on the events that were sometimes happening, literally, right under their noses.

The weblogger is increasingly playing a larger role in the Netherlands. People such as Adam Curry and Wim de Bie, but also politicians such as Gerrit Zalm (VVD) and Jan Marijnissen (SP) keep weblogs which are visited frequently and the content of which regularly draws the attention of the media.

Weblogs can be used for just about anything. Some examples:

• Baby blog: a weblog that parents have made about their baby.
• Business blog: a weblog where announcements are posted by a business. 
• Class blog: a weblog where announcements are posted by a class, by the teacher as well as the pupils. This could be class experiences, the daily agenda with tasks and lessons, photos, letters to parents and links that can be used during classes or at home.
• Opinion blog: a weblog where opinions, comments and/or satirical views are posted almost daily about current affairs and society.
• Travel blog: a weblog about a journey people are taking. The weblog can be maintained along the way so that those remaining at home can enjoy the trip too.