Someone explain this whole blogging thing to me...

[ActuaryTm]

Not all blogs are without merit.

 

[slydecix]

Originally posted by: notfred
I don't give a crap about any 14 year-old's xanga site or whatever, but there's a whole network of professional blogs out there, written by intelligent people who do things like develop the .NET platform for microsoft, or run car companies, or design web browsers, or lots of other things.

All these blogs are interconnected with things like trackback (How the Fvck does trackback work, can somone explain that?) and they're tracked on places like http://www.technorati.com/, but I don't really get the significance of sites like this, they just show what's posted most often, or linked to most often? There's a whole community behind this, with it's own vocabulary and it's own technologies (how about RSS?) that I'm jsut really not familiar with.

What Is TrackBack?

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

TrackBack ping: a ping in this context means a small message sent from one webserver to another.

And why would person B be interested in what person A has to say?

* Person A has written a post on his own weblog that comments on a post in Person B's weblog. This is a form of remote comments--rather than posting the comment directly on Person B's weblog, Person A posts it on his own weblog, then sends a TrackBack ping to notify Person B.
* Person A has written a post on a topic that a group of people are interested in. This is a form of content aggregation--by sending a TrackBack ping to a central server, visitors can read all posts about that topic. For example, imagine a site which collects weblog posts about Justin Timberlake. Anyone interested in reading about JT could look at this site to keep updated on what other webloggers were saying about his new album, a photo shoot in a magazine, etc.

RSS is like an online paperboy. You can subscribe to RSS feeds using an aggregator and it'll notify you whenever the blog/feed gets updated.

Technorati just lets you search blog entries. The great thing is that it picks up on new entries a few minutes after they've been posted. Let's say some big news event happened and you wanted to find out more about it. Googling for it isn't going to do anything cuz you'd have to wait for all the websites that wrote about it to get indexed.

Microsoft and other companies have started blogging because it really opens up the company and lets you see what's going on behind the walls. You can talk directly with developers in ways you couldn't before.

 

[DJFuji]

Blogs are to some an online diary where they can express themselves and their opinoins, much like ATOT. I, for one, don't particularly like the idea of the whole world being able to cyber-stalk me. It's bad enough here on AT. But anyone who's every used google to pull up a solution to a programming problem that's been bugging you for days knows that blogs can be quite helpful. I've benefitted several times from Microsoft's developers blogs.

 

[igowerf]

A lot of blogs are almost like news websites that post regular articles relating to specific topics. I used to read one that discussed CSS and web design.

 

[DaWhim]

microsoft actually pays a guy to write blog for them. I can't find the article, it is about the new way of doing PR.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Originally posted by: mwtgg
Because they think that people actually care about their life.

What's more disturbing is that people actually take time out of their own lives to read it.

Being posted on the internet does nothing for its importance.

Viper GTS

ignorance abound... that's not disturbing at all. for example, if you're a CEO and looking to get venture funding, it makes sense to take time our of your own life to read the blog of a VC to see where their interests lie and how they think. there are plenty of people using blogs to improve their business relations.

 

[AayushP]

Originally posted by: notfred
There's a whole community behind this, with it's own vocabulary and it's own technologies (how about RSS?) that I'm jsut really not familiar with.

May be you need some professional help for blogging. Here is where you can go. :laugh:

 

[moshquerade]

it's something bored people do hoping they get the attention of others reading how they are trying to make it sound like they aren't bored.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: notfred
Most of the people in this thread can't read, can they?

It thinks more more of an indication that they don't care what you have to say than an attempt to appease you.

 

[bleeb]

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
Metrosexuals like to write in their little frilly journals.

yup.