Do Bloggers Really Use Blogging Terms?

Posted on December 4, 2005

Wikipedia has a glossary page here about blogging terms. It says these terms are a "few of the more common phrases and words." But it turns out this isn't the case with a few of the words that are hardly used at all.

Blogger, Audioblog, blog client, blog feed, BlogDay, blogroll, blogosphere, blogsite, comment spam, dark blog, moblog, multi-blog, multi-blogger, permalink, photoblog, ping, podcasting, rss aggregator, rss feed, splog, trackback, troll are all commonly used or obvious so we won't discuss them.

Here is a closer look at some of the other words on Wikipedia's list of blogging terms:

Autocasting: "Automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds."
-- Technorati shows just 42 results. BlogPulse has 37.

Blam: "A blog which contains nothing but advertising or marketing - often generated mechanically. BLAM is analogous to SPAM or SPIM."
-- Technorati shows over 4,000 results but most are not for the above meaning. It has been replaced or outshined by the more frequently used term "splog."

Bleg: "A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of 'blog' and 'beg'."
-- Technorati shows 705 results and BlogPulse has 837 results. Surprisingly, bloggers are making good use of this term.

Blog hopping: "to follow links from one blog entry to another, with related side-trips to various articles, sites, discussion forums, and more."
Bloggers are blog hopping. BlogPulse lists over 1,200 results.

Blogorrhea: "A portmanteau of 'blog' and 'logorrhea', meaning excessive and/or incoherent talkativeness in a weblog."
-- 48 results on Technorati. Gawker uses it in their Blogorrhea NYC posts.

Blogsnob: "A person who refuses to respond to comments on their blog from people outside their circle of friends."
-- There are a few blogsnobs. Technorati shows 128 blogsnob results and BlogPulse has 146.

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."
-- Technorati shows 332 results and BlogPulse has indexed 252 blogstorm posts. Blogstorm is a good word that is not used as often as it probably should be.

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 conciousness as expressed through a weblog."
-- Blogstream is quite popular: 1,900 results on Technorati.

Dark Blog: "A non-public blog (e.g. behind a firewall)"
-- This is not a popular term. We once posted about it. Technorati has 172 results.

Flog: "A portmanteau of 'fake' and 'blog'. A blog that's ghostwritten by someone, such as in the marketing department."
-- There was more talk of flogs back during the days of the Lincoln Fry blog but flog isn't used much anymore. Bloggers are actively using the term "flog" with over 6,000 results on Technorati but they are using it for a variety of other reasons and not to refer to fake blogs. A few results for flog as a "fake blog" but most are from over 200 days ago. Most bloggers are just calling them "fake blogs" and not using flog or flogs.

Shocklog: "Weblogs to produce shocking discussions by posting various shocking content."
-- Technorati shows just two results for shocklog. BlogPulse has just eleven.

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.'"
-- Hardly anyone is using this boring term. Zero results< on Technorati and six on BlogPulse.

Words and phrases like adverblog, celeblog and blog network are all used more frequently than some of the terms above. It looks like the Wikipedia's list of blogging terms could use an update.