| Above the fold: | Reference to the content on a blog that appears without scrolling down in the open window. Borrowed from newspaper terminology. |
| Anonoblog | A blog maintained by an anonymous author, often under a pseudonym or pen name. Synonyms include anonyblog, faux blog and ghostblog. |
| astroturf marketing | Also known as "astroturfing." Astroturf marketing is the artificial creation of a grassroots buzz for a product or service. Astroturf marketing has a negative connotation, primarily because disreputable marketers have used deceptive tactics to build their buzz by taking advantage of the anonymity the Internet provides. |
| Atom | Atom is a machine-readable XML-based web syndication format which allows users to subscribe to blogs and other web content subject to frequent change. This XML file may be called an Atom feed, webfeed, Atom stream or Atom channel. |
| Autocasting | Automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text-only blogs from RSS feeds. |
| Audioblog | A blog where the blogger posts recordings of voice, music or other audio content, often with textual annotation to identify the content for indexing. |
| Barking moonbat | Negative term describing someone as being at the far edge of whatever ideology he or she is advocating. Shorthand for crazy. Often put opposite "wingnuts" on the ideological spectrum. (Coined by Perry de Havilland) |
| Biz Blog | A blog owned and operated by a business or corporation. |
| Blacklist | Lists of URLs identified as spam URLs and therefore eliminated from comments and trackbacks on a blog. |
| Blargon | Blogging slang. What this glossary contains. (blog + jargon) (Coined by William Safire) |
| Blaudience | The audience of a blog. |
| Blawg | A blog about the law, often written by a law professor, law student, law review or lawyer. |
| Bleg | 1. A blog or blog post consisting of a request to readers of the blog for ideas, donations, commentary or other content. | 2. To ask for contributions or feedback using a blog or blog post as a venue. |
| Blego | The self-worth of a blogger, as measured by the popularity of their blog. (blog + ego) |
| Blinking | Also called b-linking" or b'linking. This is a synonym of blog hopping, or moving from blog to blog by clicking on the links on the page, often links found on the sidebar. |
| Blog | 1. A blog, or weblog, is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the Web site> that hosts the blog. Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors, especially those that support a point being made on a post. | 2. To maintain a blog by posting text, links, images or other content, often using blogging software. |
| Blog carnival | A blog post that links to other articles, within or outside of the blog, that cover a specific topic. Blog carnivals may be hosted by a list of frequent contributors to the carnival, working in rotation, and encourage new posts by those contributors. A blog carnival also can highlight new bloggers that post on the topic in question. |
| Blog ecosystem | A map of the relationships between different blogs online, similar to mapping trophic levels or interrelationships in nature. |
| Blog client | An application that allows a blogger to post, edit, format and perform a variety of functions for a blog or blogs without launching a browser. Synonym of blogging client. |
| Blog Digest | A blog whose purpose is to summarize, and often comment upon, other blogs daily. |
| Blog feed | The XML-based file into which blog hosting software embeds a machine-readable version of a blog to allow it to be syndicated for distribution, often through RSS and atom. |
| Blog hopping | To follow links from one blog entry to another, with related side-trips to various articles, sites, discussion forums, and more. See "blinking." |
| Blog site | The location of a blog online, indicated by its URL. This may be a dedicated domain, like instapundit.com, a sub-domain, like techtargetnews.blogspot.com, or embedded within a web site, like http://www.gillin.com/blog. Sometimes confused with "blogsite." |
| Blog voyeur | A reader of blogs who has no blog of his or her own. See also "blurker." |
| Blogathy | When a blogger ceases to care about posting on a blog. (blog + apathy) |
| BlogDay | August 31st. Bloggers worldwide post an annual recommendation of 5 new blogs. The day is intended for bloggers to highlight other blogs that differ from their own creations in terms of culture, viewpoint, design or political view or affiliation. |
| Blogebrity | 1. Somone who is famous for blogging. See "Dooced." | 2. An online project that created a blog, of the same name, that proposed to ranking of other blogs by popularity and launch a magazine. The blog was, in fact, an entry in a competition to discover which meme could create the most web traffic without the use of advertising. (Suggested by David Simmer II) |
| Blogerati | 1. The collective blogging intelligentsia, commonly understood as being the most influential and highly trafficked bloggers online by page rank and the effect of link traffic. | 2. The most intellectually hefty subsection of this group. |
| Blogger | 1. A person who creates and posts to a blog. Synonym of weblogger, though the latter is infrequently used. | 2. Blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site, acquired and run currently by Google. |
| Blogger bash | A party for bloggers, either online or offline. |
| Bloggerel | An opinion posted on a blog that has previously been repeated many times, usually ad nauseum. (blog + doggerel) |
| Bloggies | Annual blogging awards, featuring online voting and an offline ceremony with nominations in several different categories. |
| Blogistan | Used interchangably with blogosphere, though more often applied to warblogs or milblogs. |
| Blogiversary | The anniversary of a blog's founding. |
| Blognoscenti | Bloggers who are especially knowledgable about the blogosphere, blogging, or their particular blogging subject area. (blog + cognoscenti) |
| Blogography | The profile or "About" section of a blog, often containing a short biography. |
| Blogoholic | A blogger addicted to blogging, to such a large extent that it detracts from other areas of the blogger's life. |
| Blogorific | Something the blogger finds wonderful. Synonyms include blogerific and blogtastic. (blog + terrific) |
| Blogorhhea | Excessive and overly verbose posting on a blog, often unedited in a stream of consciousness style. (blog + logorrhea) |
| Blogosphere | The collective content of the blogs worldwide, taken as whole. The term may also refer to the subculture of the community as well, referring to the social network that the interrelationships that bloggers have with one another beyond the technical network itself. Synonyms include blogspace, blogistan, and blogoverse. (Coined by William T. Quick) |
| Blogroach | A commenter on a blog who obnoxiously disagrees with any and everything posted, as rudely as is possible. (Coined by Stacy Tabb) |
| Blogroll. | 1. A list of blogs, usually placed in the sidebar of a blog, that reads as a list of recommendations by the blogger of other blogs. Often indicative of the political affiliations of a blogger, these lists may also include many other kinds of recommended media, including newspapers, journals, books or even companies. | 2. Software that manages this list of sites for the blogger, notably Blogrolling.com. | 3. To add a blog to a blogroll. |
| Blogsit | To maintain a blog while the blog's original or primary author takes a break from blogging. |
| Blogsite | A Web site that combines blog feeds from a number of different sources, including non-blog sources. |
| Blogsnob | A blogger that is unwilling to acknowledge comments on a blog from anyone outside of his or her circle of friends. |
| Blogspot | Hosting service for blogs operated by Blogger.com, which in turn is run by Google. |
| Blogstipation | 1. The condition of being unable to thinking of anything post anything on a blog (blog + constipation) | 2. The state of being unable to post to a blog because the hosting service is unavailable. (Coined by Jim Treacher) |
| Blogstorm | A large spike in activity, in terms of posting in the blogosphere, centering around a particular subject or controversy, which can be either online or offline. Synonym of blog swarm. |
| Blogstream Media | Used a reference to the most heavily trafficked blogs, as a commentator might reference "mainstream media." Abbreviated as BSM. |
| BlogThis | This software function allows a reader to generate a blog entry automatically based upon a blog entry that the blogger is reading, posting directly to the blogger's own blog. |
| Blogule | An idea within a post that does not quite constitute a meme. (Coined by Brian Micklethwait) |
| Blogvert | A blog ad. See blogvertising. |
| Blogvertising | Advertising that appears on a blog, often in the sidebar or in a banner ad on the masthead or embedded within posts. Explosive growth fueled by BlogAds and Google Ads in recent years has made blogging as a full time profession financially viable for operators of high traffic blogs. |
| Blooger | Refers to a blogger acting like a teenager or in an otherwise immature or boorish manner. |
| Blurker | 1. A reader of blogs that leaves no trace of the visits behind. (blog + lurker) | 2. A reader of blogs who has no blog of his or her own. See also "blog voyeur." |
| Bookmarklet | A link directly to the new post function of blogging software. This link can be added to a browser toolbar to create a shortcut to posting. |
| Bye-line | The text, generally at the end of a post, that identifies the poster. A play on "byline", a newspaper writer's authorial identification, i.e. "By John Smith." |
| CAPTCHA | A security feature that presents an image that includes letters and numbers and by requires a user to type in those letters. Used to minimize and eliminate posting, comment and trackback spam. (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) |
| Celeblog | A blog focused on a celebrity. |
| Celebriblog | A blog maintained by a celebrity. |
| CEOBlog. | A blog maintained by a chief executive officer. Variants include CIOBlog, CFOBlog, etc. See this blog for an example, or visit this page for a comprehensive list. |
| Clog Blog | A blog written in Dutch and/or by someone in Holland. |
| Commentariat | The collection of commenters for a particular blog, though the term may also be applied to the blogosphere or even the media as a whole. |
| Commenter | One who leaves a comment on a blog. |
| Comment Spam | spam posted in the comment section of blogs, usually consisting of a few lines of text (usually unrelated to the post) and a link, often to a splog. These comments are almost always posted by spambots crawling the blogosphere. The links posted elevate the splog's place in search engine rankings and may also send unwitting users to sites that install adware, spyware or malware onto the browser's PC. Many blogging services now offer character recognition authorization or registration for comments that prevents posting of these comments. Also called "spomments." See also: "captcha." |
| Crisis Blog | A blog specifically created to respond to a public relations crisis for an organization. Natural disasters like Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami have also spawned similar crisis blogs, expanding the definition. |
| Crud | Code that unintentionally appears within the body of a blog post, instead of applying whatever formatting or action that the code was intended to perform. |
| Dark Blog | A blog that is unavailable to the public, often hidden behind a firewall or registration barrier. |
| Del.icio.us | 1. The social bookmarking site where users can collectively tag favorite links. | 2. To be "del.icio.used" is to be tagged as popular. Trying to create popular content can be described as "deliciousing." |
| DNQ/DNP | Do Not Quote/Do Not Print. Borrowed from chat shorthand, indicating that whatever the acronym is applied to should not be posted anywhere else. (Coined by Gary Farber) |
| Dooced | To have lost a job because of entries posted to a blog. (Coined by and because of, Heather B. Armstrong. Here's why. |
| Dowdificication | Omitting one or several words from a quote in a way that changes the nature of the statement sufficiently to illustrate a point the writer is making, in the context of launching a criticism of the author of the quote. Specifically, the term derives from a column written by Maureen Dowd in a 2003 Op-Ed column impugning President Bush. (Coined by James Taranto) |
| Down thread | Referring to a post made earlier than a comment or post that you are reading, within the same section. |
| Event blog: | A blog that contains content specific to an event. |
| Fisk | To deconstruct an article or post point by point, usually in such a way as to point out poorly made arguments or sloppy fact-checking. Originates in the name of journalist Robert Fisk, who has been targeted in this way within the blogosphere many times. |
| Flame | To post a hostile comment, often directed personally to another commenter or blogger and generally deliberately inflammatory or insulting. A flame is generally not meant to be constructive, add to a discussion or persuade other commenters of a position. The term comes from long usage in the context of from newsgroups or discussion lists. |
| Flame war | A series of flames going back and forth on a blog, usually within the comment section, often going on for pages and bearing little relation to whatever topic was on the thread the flames are posted upon. |
| Flog | A blog that is written by someone other than the indicated author. Often applied to corporate blogs or those written by politicians, where the public relations department or aides do the blogging. (flack + blog). |
| Froglogs | French blogs. Derisive term, occasionally shortened to Frog. |
| Glog | To blog about an activity in person, where the person blogging is a participant in the activity. |
| Google bomb | To insert words or phrases into blogs, often as many as possible, with the intention of increase the page ranking of the words or terms on Google search results. (Coined by Adam Mathes) |
| Group blog | A blog maintained by two or more bloggers. Synonym of groupblog. |
| Hitnosis | To become mesmerized by constantly reloading a Web browser to see if a blog's hit counter has increased or comments section has expanded. (Coined by Perry de Havilland) |
| Idiotarian | Abusive term for an advocate of views a writer considers to be irrational, subjective, or without any relationship to the real world. While idiotarians may often be socialists, the term may also be applied to conservative or libertarian thinking. |
| Instalanche | When a Web site receives a huge amount of temporary traffic due to a link being posted on instapundit.com. The phenomenon can slow or even crash Web servers that are not configured for this amount of traffic. Also known as "Instapundited." |
| Journal blog | The most common form of blog, usually taking the form of a personal diary or journal. |
| Kittyblogger | A blogger who writes about his or her cats. More generally used to deride a blog or post as banal or boring. |
| Klog | A blog used by knowledge workers, where the blog itself is hosted within a company intranet for the purpose of sharing company knowledge. See also "plog." |
| Klogger | Someone maintains or contributes to a Klog. |
| Lexiblographer | A person who chronicles blog terms. |
| Linguablog | A blog that focuses on linguistics, translation, languages, or other language-related subjects. (Coined by Enigmatic Mermaid) |
| Link | Using hypertext, a link is a selectable connection from one word, picture, or information object to another. |
| Link love | To post a link to another blog without being paid or solicited to do so. |
| Link orgy | When a blog is linked to by many sites within a short period of time. (Coined by James Martin) |
| Link rot | The phenomenon whereby links from posts or blogrolls increasingly go dead as time passes. |
| Link whore | Any blogger, regardless of gender, who makes an extraordinary effort to get other blogs to link his or her blog or post. Also called a "Link slut." |
| Lurker | A reader of a blog who never comments or otherwise indicates his or her presence. Adopted from the same usage in newsgroups or BBSs. |
| Mediasphere | A term describing the entirety of the conventional media, usually separate from the blogosphere. |
| Meme | An idea passed down on from one human generation to another. The cultural equivalent of a gene, the basic element of biological inheritance. Amongst bloggers, meme refers to an idea passed from one blog to another, cascading throughout the blogosphere. |
| Meme hack | An intentional change made to a meme, by using it in a different context or otherwise altering its meaning. |
| Metablog | To blog about blogging. |
| Milblog | A blog written by a members or veterans of any branch of the U.S. armed services, made much more popular and relevant by members of the military posting directly from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. (military + blog) |
| Moblog | 1. A blog that is maintained by using a mobile device such as a PDA (personal digital assistant) or cell phone. Currently, the most common way to update a moblog is by uploading files from a camera phone to an established blog. | 2. To blog by using such a mobile device. |
| Momosphere | Describing blogs written by mothers. |
| MSM | Mainstream Media |
| Multiblog | To create or maintain multiple blogs at the same time. |
| netiquette | netiquette is etiquette on the Internet. Since the Internet changes rapidly, its netiquette does too, but it's still usually based on the Golden Rule. The need for a sense of netiquette arises mostly when sending or distributing e-mail, posting on Usenet groups, chatting and blogging. |
| Newbie | Term, potentially derisive, applied to someone new to a discussion or blog, often after the person demonstrated unfamiliarity with a concept or standards of communication of the forum. Also called "noob" or "noobie." |
| Open Thread | A thread whose topic is open for definition by those posting to it. Common to blogs with large readerships that visit to exchange views, as opposed to focus exclusively on posts from the blogger. |
| Permalink | The unique URL of a single post on a blog, used when anyone wants to link specifically to a post rather than to the most recently updated page of a blog. |
| Photoblog | A blog that primarily consists of photos. Long standing term and practice made wildly popular by Flickr, the online photo sharing Web site. |
| Ping | In the context of blogging, a ping is 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 | 1. A personalized blog created by Amazon.com for a customer. | 2. A Web-based tool used by colleagues to track and organize group projects. (project + log) | 3. To blog using a Palm Pilot or any device running the Palm OS. | 4. A preview blog, where products or events are described in advance. |
| Pornblog | A blog that displays or discusses pornography. A risk when clicking "Next Blog" in the Blogger toolbar. |
| Podcasting | podcasting is the preparation and distribution of audio (and possibly other media) files for download to digital music or multimedia players, such as the iPod. |
| Post | A single unit of content on a blog, usually consisting of at least a title and text. A blog is made up of a collection of posts. |
| Post scheduling | Using blogging software to write posts and schedule them for publishing in the future. |
| Progblog | A progressive blog. A blog that supports left, liberal or green political ideologies. (Coined by Madeleine Begun) |
| RSS | Really Simple Syndication. A method of describing news or other Web content that is available for "feeding" (distribution or syndication) from an online publisher to Web users. |
| RSS Aggregator | Software or service that automatically check a series of RSS feeds for new items on an ongoing basis, making it possible to keep track of changes to multiple Web in real time through one application. |
| RSS Feed | The file that contains the latest updates to an RSS-equipped page. |
| RTWT | Read The Whole Thing. Common acronym found on blogs that are heavy on links and light on commentary. |
| Reciprocal Link | When one blogger exchanges links on its blogroll with another blogger's blogroll. |
| Repost | To post a comment or post that had already been posted, either within a thread or on another blog. Generally frowned upon in the blogosphere, especially when the content is from another blogger's site. |
| Scribosphere | The collection of blogs that are maintained by screenwriters. |
| Shocklog | A blog that intentionally provokes discussion by posting content aimed at shocking readers. |
| Sidebar | One or more columns generally found on the side of most blogs, usually containing a profile of the blogger, blogroll, advertising, Flickr feeds or other plug-ins. |
| Sideblog | A smaller blog usually placed in the sidebar of a blog. A blog within a blog. Sideblog.com provides this service .See also: link blog. |
| Simultaneous Blogasm | What happens when two bloggers post the same thought at the same time. |
| Skins | One of a set of pre-designed templates for a blog, giving it a customized set of images, fonts and layouts. |
| Skypecasting | The practice of using Skype, the VoIP telephony service, to create podcasts, vidcasts and blog entries. (Coined by Stuart Henshall of Skype Journal) |
| Slashdotted | When a Web site receives a huge amount of temporary traffic due to a link being posted on slashdot.org. The phenomenon can slow Web servers or even take sites temporarily offline by exceeding the allotted bandwidth for the site. The term can be used as shorthand for traffic surges due to posts on other extremely popular blogs, including Instapundit, BoingBoing, The Huffington Post or DailyKos. See also: "Instalanche." |
| Spambot | A program designed to collect, or harvest, e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam . |
| Sping | A ping sent from a splog to make recipients think content of interest has been updated although that may not be the case. |
| Splog | A blog composed of spam, or, more widely, any blog whose creator doesn't add any written value of his or her own. Synonyms include spam blog and blam, though the latter is used infrequently. (spam + blog) |
| Spomment | See comment spam. |
| Tag | A generic term for a language element descriptor, often used in blogs to identify the type or types of content that makes up a particular post. |
| Tag cloud | Visual representations of tags or keywords used in a blog. Tag clouds may be used to organize content and can be presented in boldface to distinguish them from other text. |
| Thread | A series of posts on a specific topic. |
| Thread drift | The phenomenon of off-topic posts in a thread that is devoted to a specific topic. |
| Trackback | A protocol that allows a blogger to link to post, often on other blogs, that relate to a selected subject. Blogging software that supports Trackback includes a "TrackBack URL" with each post that displays other blogs that have linked to it. |
| Trackback ping | A ping that signals a blog's server that a post on that blog has been commented upon. |
| Trackback spam | Sping sent by means of the Trackback system. Many blogs stopped using Trackback after the system became flooded with this type of spam. See also "comment spam." |
| Troll | A contributor to an online discussion whose purpose in posting is primarily is to generate intense debate, often with intentionally inflammatory rhetoric. Troll literally "troll," a form of fishing, for reaction from contributors to the forum with the intention of stimulating a flamewar. |
| Vlog | A vlog (or video blog) is a blog that contains video content. The small, but growing, segment of the blogosphere devoted to vlogs is sometimes referred to as the vlogosphere. |
| Vlogger | One who maintains a vlog. |
| Vorage | To search for video online and share it with others. (video + forage) |
| Warblog | A blog focused on war, commonly conflict in the Middle East but not limited to that theater. Often written by soldiers or battlefield journalists. See this blog for an example. |
| Weblog | Longer, alternative form of blog. (Coined by Jorn Barger) |
| Word Banning | A feature from TypePad that allows a blogger to ban specific words, in addition to IP addresses, into a comment spam filter. |
