On my Twitter page I have listed some of the words and abbreviations associated with Twitter and tweeting. These include:

RT or Retweet – this is when a message is reused and the originator is acknowledged

MT or Modified Tweet – a retweet that has been modified slightly (often to reduce the character count but sometimes to add emphasis)

DM or Direct Message – this is where you can send or receive a private message (providing both parties follow each other)

HT or Hat Tip – to acknowledge finding another person’s tweet or link interesting.

It is only when you start to talk to someone new to social media and see their confused faces as you add what is to them jargon into your conversation. Despite your best efforts to explain Twitter or Pinterest for example it is important to remember that they may have never come across let alone understand some of these new terms.

I recently came across an A-Z ‘Glossary of Blogging that is being developed on Wikipedia and was amazed to find so many entries of blog-related terms. It made me realise how many new words are being created. What would you add to this list?!

Glossary of Blogging

A

Atom: Another popular feed format developed as an alternative to RSS.

Autocasting: Automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds.

Audioblog: A blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings sent by mobile phone, sometimes with some short text message added for metadata purposes. (cf. podcasting)

B

Blawg: A law blog.

Bleg: An entry in a blog requesting information or contributions.

Blog Carnival: A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.

Blog client: (weblog client) is software to manage (post, edit) blogs from operating system with no need to launch a web browser. A typical blog client has an editor, a spell-checker and a few more options that simplify content creation and editing.

Blog publishing service: A software which is used to create the blog. Some of the most popular are WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type and Joomla.

Blogger: Person who runs a blog. Also blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site. Rarely: weblogger.

Bloggies: One of the most popular blog awards.

Blogroll: A list of other blogs that a blogger might recommend by providing links to them (usually in a sidebar list).

Blogosphere: All blogs, or the blogging community.

Blogware: A category of software which consists of a specialized form of a Content Management System: specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs.

The BOBs: The largest international blog awards.

C

Catblogging (traditionally “Friday catblogging”): The practice of posting pictures of cats, in typical cat postures and expressions, on a blog.

Collaborative blog: A blog (usually focused on a single issue or political stripe) on which multiple users enjoy posting permission. Also known as group blog.

Comment spam: Like e-mail spam. Robot “spambots” flood a blog with advertising in the form of bogus comments. A serious problem that requires bloggers and blog platforms to have tools to exclude some users or ban some addresses in comments.

D

Desktop Blogging Client: An off-line blog management (posting, editing and archiving) tool

F

Feeds: See RSS Feeds.

Fisking: To rebut a blog entry in a line-by-line fashion.

Flog: A portmanteau of “fake” and “blog”. A blog that’s ghostwritten by someone, such as in the marketing department.

H

Health blog: A blog that covers health topics, events and/or related content of the health industry and the general community.In short any thing related to health.

J

J-blog: A journalist blog or a blog with a Jewish focus.

L

Legal blog: A blog about law.

Lifelog: capture their entire lives, or large portions of their lives.

Litblog: A blog that focuses primarily on the topic of literature.

M

Milblog: Term for blogs written by members or veterans of any branch of military service – Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. A contraction of military and blog.

Moblog: A portmanteau of “mobile” and “blog”. A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages. They are often photoblogs.

Mommy blog: A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family.

Multiblog: A blog constructed as a conversation between more than two people.

P

Permalink: Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. Use this when you want to link to a post somewhere.

Phlog: Type of blog utilising the Gopher protocol instead of HTTP

Photoblog: A portmanteau of “photo” and “blog”.

Photoblog: A blog mostly containing photos, posted constantly and chronologically.

Pingback: 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.

Podcasting: Contraction of “iPod” and “broadcasting” (but not for iPods only). Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, for digital players.

Post: An entry written and published to a blog.

Post Slug: For blogs with common language URLs, the post slug is the portion of the URL that represents the post. Example: http://domain.com/2008/01/this-is-the-post-slug

R

RSS: Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.

RSS aggregator: Software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on their favourite blogs. Also called a reader, or feedreader.

RSS feed: The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.

S

Search engine friendly URLs: or, for short, SEF URLs, implemented with a Rewrite engine.

Spam blog: A blog which is composed of spam. A Spam blog or “any blog whose creator doesn’t add any written value.”

Slashdot effect: The Slashdot effect can hit blogs or other website, and is caused by a major website (usually Slashdot, but also Digg, Metafilter, Boing Boing, Instapundit and others) sending huge amounts of temporary traffic that often slow down the server.

Subscribe: The term used when a blogs feed is added to a feed reader like Bloglines or Google. Some blogging platforms have internal subscriptions, this allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog.

T

Templates: Templates, used on the “back end” of a blog that work together to handle information and present it on a blog.

Theme: CSS based code that when applied to the templates will result in visual element changes to the blog. The theme, as a whole, is also referred to as a blog design.

TrackBack: A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

V

Vlog: A video blog; a vlogger is a video blogger (e.g. someone who records himself interviewing people of a certain field).

W

Warblog: A blog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war.

Weblog: The unshortened version of ‘blog’.