The art of the blog

A shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.

Information
A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.

But neither of those things are blogging, quite. A weblog is neither a scrapbook nor an e-mailed newsletter. A proper weblog is about something, presents current Web-based information with every post, and is readable from a single URL.

It is more than "Hey, look at me." It must include: "Hey, look what I found," with links to items of interest. And it must be easy both to write and to read.

Connect
A Weblog connects you to other people. Anybody with a Web browser can access your Weblog to read what you've written and download files you've posted. It is a way to express your Point-of-View for others to consume, digest, and respond to.

Weblogs go beyond Office
While Microsoft Office is great at documents, it doesn't help you share the documents you've created. Further, it doesn't put those documents into the context of your life as it changes day to day.

Weblogs go beyond email
While email is great for one-to-one communication, it fails at one-to-many. Additionally, email systems don't organize information for you. While you can categorize email you receive, email doesn't provide you with the context of the message.

Source: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/