Inspired by a reader who confessed he has just recently joined the blogosphere, I thought I’d go over the terminology associated with this brave new world.
Blogger, WordPress and blogs
The alternative before the internet was if you wanted to be heard nationally you had to go through a traditional medium like becoming a journalist at a newspaper and then writing pre-approved articles for them.And in the early times people created webpages or websites hosted on servers, with special domain names like (http://fabulouslybrokeinthecity.com) and had to learn how to code HTML and figure out what all that coding meant, just to get simple words and pictures on the WWW.
Plus, they had to and still have to pay to have a website, as it is not free, with server costs and domain names having to be purchased.
Then Blogger and WordPress came along, and made it easier for people who wanted to have websites and to post their thoughts and articles without having to fuss with all of that code.
Think of it as a sort of channel where bloggers like myself can post pictures, write articles and do it all only answering to ourselves.
Google Reader, RSS Feeds and Feedburner
Google Reader is NOT the only RSS Feed Aggregator out there (here’s a Wikipedia list of ALL the possible Feed Aggregators), but first let’s talk about what an RSS Feed actually is.
It stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and all that means to you is that it crawls out onto the web, and collects ALL of the new updates and posts of the blogs you have RSS subscribed to.
So if you read my blog, and a bunch of other blogs, and you don’t really have the time, patience or the memory (plus list of Favourites) to remember all of these blogs to keep clicking on each one, each day to see if they posted something new, you can RSS FEED them.
This is what it looks like in Google Reader. You can make folders, put it all in one section, etc.
My RSS Feed URL is: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/FabulouslyBrokeInTheCity and it looks like this as a website:
And on 99% of all the blogs I go to, they have “RSS FEED ME!” right at the top of their page, or at the bottom of every post to let you know you can get their posts and updates right in your readers.
Here’s how you can try out Google Reader, and add Fabulously “Broke” in the City to your Google RSS Reader.Now that you know what an RSS Feed is, for bloggers, Feedburner is just a platform that simply counts and manages the RSS feeds of your blog and lets you know how people subscribe to your blog.
They tell you how many people have subscribed to your blog to get updates, and it allows you to manage what your feeds look like on other RSS Feeders (whether you burn a full feed or just a partial one) and just in case you want to do copyright blurbs like this on all of your feeds in an RSS Reader.
You can learn how to add RSS Feed Footer Blurbs here and you can also learn how to Figure out if you are burning a Full or Partial Feed.The last cool thing about Google Reader is the Google Reader SHARED ITEMS. You can share items with someone, and vice versa, and instead of prowling the web all over the place looking for interest websites or pieces of information, you kind of have a group sharing mentality going on.
Sort of like real-time link love.
It can be confusing because it is a lot like an actual website, blog or URL. You can add my original blog, and you can also add my RSS Feed Shared Items.
My Google Reader Shared Items URL is a separate one:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/13285849961214282654
…and is a different website than from my actual blog’s RSS Feed itself.
You can read more about the difference and how to do it here and this is what it looks like:
(P.S. I encourage you to add ME to your Google Reader Shared Items, so I can see what you mark as being fun or relevant.)
Tumblr, Tlogs or Tumblelogs
Tumblr can be located here, and works a lot like Blogger, and allows you to own something called a tumblelog.
A tumblelog or “tlog” is a type of blog that is mostly short-form posts, with lots of different media like photos, quotes, dialogues, video, links.
Think of it as almost like a short-form or a short-version of blogging. So for example, instead of my posting all about my trip to Ontario with what I spent and what I thought, in a tlog, I’d just post the photos without commentary and money notes.
Tumblr, the platform for tlogs, makes it very easy to post all types of mixed media that Blogger clearly has limitations in doing unless you know a bit of HTML and whatnot.
StumbleUpon or Stumblr
StumbleUpon is a website that works much like any other search site, except you can see that if you like a certain blog, other people are able to show you what other blogs out there in that similar fashion may interest you.
You discover new websites and rate them. You can also pay people to do this, and put money towards a StumbleUpon campaign as a way to raise your blog rating and buzz, as per Natalie MacNeil of She Takes on The World.
Something like the Amazon feature that tells you: “People who like this, also liked…..”
Stumblr, is a sort of marriage between StumbleUpon+ Tumblr (see above). It is tlogging and favouriting what else a person might like at the same time, sort of like recommendations.
It is almost exactly like Twitter to me (short and sweet, short videos & quotes), but more dynamic.
del.icio.us or “Delicious”
Much like StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, now just simply called “delicious”, is a way for people to share their favourite web bookmarks.
The founder called it “social bookmarking” and it is now owned by Yahoo!.
Technorati
Much like Google, Technorati is an internet search engine for blogs, but their real purpose is to rank those blogs on the basis of how many outside blogs link to them, and to reflect the current zeitgeist on the blogosphere of which blogs people are interested in and what they have linked to lately.
As you can see on my left-hand bar on my page, I have around 170 – 180 as my Technorati rank or score.
And this little button means you can favourite me as one of your Technorati Favourite blogs.
That is the number of blogs or websites link to my blog, Fabulously “Broke” in the City within a 90 day period.
Naturally, as the days pass, the blogs that previously linked to my website will now be considered old links and not counted as part of my Technorati score.
ExampleI have a Blog A that links to me.My Technorati score is 1.
Blog B links to me.
Now my score goes up to 2.
After 90 days from when Blog A first linked to me, that Blog A link is considered old.That link now disappears from being counted in my Technorati score.
Now my score drops back down to 1, because I only have Blog B linking to me within the past 90 days.
This is done by Technorati so that your score shows that you are still relevant in the blogging world as per the past 90 days, rather than having old archived links date back to 2005, and showing a high Technorati score when no one visits your page any longer.
Digg
I know, it’s getting kind of nuts how many things you have out there that can let you see how many websites are being recommended for you by other people. But that’s the beauty of it — you don’t have to use it all, AND you can just pick the one that jives with you the most.
Digg, is exactly like all of the other applications up there — it’s just another way for people to say “I like this article!”, and they “digg” it, which gives it an Digg ranking of how many people on the web liked it.
Google Page Rank Checker
This site is called the Google PageRank Checker (unauthorized by Google), and you just type in your URL and find out where you rank in Google’s Search Engine.
If you link a lot to outside websites like those credit card companies that won’t stop harassing me to link to their site, or if you do a lot of PayPerPost sponsored posts where companies pay you to talk about them, your page rank drops.
The higher your page rank, the higher chance you have of your page being found as “relevant” when people Google words like “money”, or “fashion” that are relevant to your blog for example.
Google Followers
Anyone who has a Blogger or even a Google Account (Gmail accounts count) can become a follower of any blog.
A Google Follower is something like a fan of the blog.
What you have to do, is sign into Blogger, using your Google Account ID and you can type in the website address of the blog you want to follow publicly (or even privately).
Then, if that blogger has something like what I do on my blog, they can proudly display all of the people who are following them.
This is a way for you to do a form of instant messaging. Each “tweet” from a Twitterer (a person), can only be 140 words long, and they call it “micro blogging”.
The actual Twitter web-based application, found here, is where you sign up for an account and so on, but to manage all of your messages, I suggest using a third-party application like TweetDeck.
I do a lot of on and off tweeting because I am sort of lazy like that, but ever since I discovered TweetDeck, it has saved my life!You can also see people tweeting from their Blackberries, emails, the web and so on. It’s like being in a HUGE chatroom of sorts, because you can follow certain tweeters like yours truly, or even someone like Christopher Walken.
Site Meter
I use this particular website a lot because I tried learning how to use Google Analytics to see where my readers were coming from, etc and it just confused me or gave me the wrong info for my feed?
Whatever. I didn’t have the patience to figure it out, so I went with Site Meter which now sends me an email that tells me how many hits I got in a week, and at what times.
Here is the most recent email from Site Meter about Fabulously “Broke” in the City:
That’s it! I’m knackered.
Those are just the main websites out there available to bloggers & readers of blogs, but there are MANY MORE ways to rank your page, check your readers and so on to help you in your quest to be a fabulous blogger.
Find something that works for you, and test it!
Experimentation is the best form of education.
- RSS Feeds: Your blog & your Google Reader shared items
- Google Reader SNAFU: Cannot get a feed from my URL
- How to add me: Using Google Reader
- Blogger: Creating a favicon
- List of WordPress Plugins
