Online diary

Last updated

An online diary or web diary, is a personal diary or journal that is published on the World Wide Web on a personal website or a diary-hosting website.

Contents

Overview

Online diaries have existed since at least 1994. As a community formed, these publications came to be almost exclusively known as online journals. Today they are almost exclusively called blogs , though some differentiate by calling them personal blogs. The running updates of online diarists combined with links inspired the term 'weblog' which was eventually contracted to form the word 'blog'.

In online diaries, people write about their day-to-day experiences, social commentary, complaints, poems, prose, illicit thoughts and any content that might be found in a traditional paper diary or journal. They often allow readers to contribute through comments or community posting.

Modern online diary platforms may allow the writer to make entries from a PC, tablet or smartphone. Writers might rate how they feel each day, invite someone to engage in a personal conversation or find counseling.

Early history

Online diaries soon caught the attention of the media with the publication of the book 24 Hours in Cyberspace (1996) which captured personal profiles of the people involved in early web pages. The earliest book-length scholarly discussion of online diaries is Philippe Lejeune's Cher écran, ("Dear Screen"). [1]

In 1998, Simon Firth described in Salon magazine how many early online diarists were abandoning the form. [2] Yet, he said, "While many of the movement's pioneers may be tired and disillusioned, the genre shows plenty of signs of life – of blossoming, even, into something remarkable: a new literary form that allows writers to connect with readers in an excitingly new way."

Formation of a community

As diarists (sometimes called escribitionists) began to learn from each other, several Webrings formed to connect various diaries and journals; the most popular was Open Pages, which started in July 1996 and had 537 members as of 20 October 1998. A community website called Diarist.net was formed and awarded "The Diarist Awards" quarterly from 1999 through 2004. There were a number of lists of diaries and journals by topic, called "'burbs", which allowed people to find sites that had some correlation to each other. [3]

Mailing lists helped solidify the community. "Collabs" were collaborative projects in which people wrote on given topics and subjects.

The launch of Open Diary in October 1998 provided the first website where online diaries could be posted together as a community. Open Diary innovated several features that would become important to online diary communities, including comments, activity feeds, and friends-only content. [4]

Technologies

Some early diaries and journals showcased different emerging internet technologies, including interactive message formats, online stores, RealAudio, RealVideo as on the early literary blogger's website nakednovelist.com (founded in 1990), live webcams, notify lists, and daily self-photographs. [5]

Today's diaries and journals may feature podcasts, trackbacks, permalinks, blogrolls and a host of other cutting-edge technologies. With the popularization of mobile apps, diary or journaling apps have become available for iOS and Android. Proponents have cited numerous reasons for journaling using digital applications, including ease and speed of typing, mobile portability, and search capabilities. Digital diaries are also tailored towards shorter-form, in-the-moment writing, similar to user engagement with social media services such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. In the 2000s, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote co-operation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before. The opportunities offered by social software are instant connections and opportunities to learn. An additional defining feature of social software is that apart from interaction and collaboration, it aggregates the collective behaviour of its users, allowing not only crowds to learn from an individual but individuals to learn from the crowds as well. Hence, the interactions enabled by social software can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many.

The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity including online shopping, education, gaming and social networking services. The social aspect of Web 2.0 communication has been to facilitate interaction between people with similar tastes. These tastes vary depending on who the target audience is, and what they are looking for. For individuals working in the public relation department, the job is consistently changing and the impact is coming from the social web. The influence held by the social network is large and ever changing.

A vlog, also known as a video blog or video log, is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts. Unlike a more general video diary, vlogs are often recorded depicting the maker throughout.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web 2.0</span> World Wide Web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier Web sites

Web 2.0 refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability for end users.

Internet identity (IID), also online identity, online personality, online persona or internet persona, is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites. It may also be an actively constructed presentation of oneself. Although some people choose to use their real names online, some Internet users prefer to be anonymous, identifying themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information. An online identity may even be determined by a user's relationship to a certain social group they are a part of online. Some can be deceptive about their identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Personal web page</span> Web page created by an individual to contain personal content

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature rather than content pertaining to a company, organization or institution. Personal web pages are primarily used for informative or entertainment purposes but can also be used for personal career marketing, social networking with other people with shared interests, or as a space for personal expression.

Open Diary is an online diary community, an early example of social networking software. It was founded on October 20, 1998. Open Diary went offline on February 7, 2014, but was re-launched on January 26, 2018. The site was owned and operated by Bruce Ableson and Susan Ableson, known on the Open Diary website by the title of their diaries, The DiaryMaster and The DiaryMistress. Ableson has described Open Diary as "the first web site that brought online diary writers together into a community."

Web fiction is written works of literature available primarily or solely on the Internet. A common type of web fiction is the web serial. The term comes from old serial stories that were once published regularly in newspapers and magazines.

An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support student and teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking. Edublogs proliferated when blogging architecture became more simplified and teachers perceived the instructional potential of blogs as an online resource. The use of blogs has become popular in education institutions including public schools and colleges. Blogs can be useful tools for sharing information and tips among co-workers, providing information for students, or keeping in contact with parents. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Educators who blog are sometimes called edubloggers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital journalism</span> Editorial content published via the Internet

Digital journalism, also known as netizen journalism or online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital journalism is debated by scholars; however, the primary product of journalism, which is news and features on current affairs, is presented solely or in combination as text, audio, video, or some interactive forms like storytelling stories or newsgames, and disseminated through digital media technology.

While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lifelog</span> Personal record of ones daily life

A lifelog is a personal record of one's daily life in a varying amount of detail, for a variety of purposes. The record contains a comprehensive dataset of a human's activities. The data could be used to increase knowledge about how people live their lives. In recent years, some lifelog data has been automatically captured by wearable technology or mobile devices. People who keep lifelogs about themselves are known as lifeloggers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Promotion of products or services on social media

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diary</span> Record of events with entries arranged by date

A diary is a written or audiovisual memorabilic record, with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwritten but are now also often digital. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, thoughts, and/or feelings, excluding comments on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone who keeps a diary is known as a diarist. Diaries undertaken for institutional purposes play a role in many aspects of human civilization, including government records, business ledgers, and military records. In British English, the word may also denote a preprinted journal format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ComiXology</span> Online comic distribution platform

Iconology Inc., d/b/a ComiXology, was a cloud-based digital distribution platform for comics owned by Amazon, with over 200 million comic downloads as of September 2013. At its height it offered a selection of more than 100,000 comic books, graphic novels, and manga across Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, Windows 10, and the Internet. In 2023, the ComiXology app was officially retired and the material was made available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle app.

Leslie Harpold was a Web publishing pioneer, humorist, and designer, whose early and unexpected death raised the issue of the vulnerability of a digital legacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippe Lejeune</span> French professor and essayist

Philippe Lejeune is a French professor and essayist, known as a specialist in autobiography. He is the author of numerous works on the subject of autobiography and personal journals. He is a cofounder of the Association pour l'autobiographie et le patrimoine autobiographique created in Paris in 1992.

As Lejeune notes in The Practice of the Private Journal, "the diary is a social outcast, of no fixed theoretical address," a problematic profile that has caused one of the most widely practiced autobiographical forms to be largely ignored or misrepresented. Lejeune’s scholarship has been instrumental in revising such intellectual snobbery. — Laurie McNeill

Mormon missionary diarists are the Mormon missionaries who kept records in the form of diaries and journals recounting their activities on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in various parts of the world. Both male and female missionaries kept these diaries and were encouraged to do so by the church. Many of these documents have been donated to the Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library, and since 2003, a large selection of these have been transcribed and digitized.

References

  1. Lejeune, Philippe (2000). "Cher écran": Journal personnel, ordinateur, Internet. Editions de Seuil. ISBN   978-2-02-041251-3.
  2. Firth, Simon (1998-06-30). "Baring your soul to the Web".
  3. The last archived version of the 'burbs listing shows 123 burbs as of 07 March 2002.
  4. Haenlein, M. (2010). "Users of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media". Business Horizons. 53: 59–68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003. S2CID   16741539.
  5. "open pages: suburbs". 3 February 2005. Archived from the original on 3 February 2005.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)