(U-WIRE) AMES, Iowa - It's one of those ubiquitous four-letter buzz words thrown around these days, though it is generally safe for mass audiences.

"What the hell is a blog?" said Colin Houseal, junior in mechanical engineering at Iowa State University.

A blog, short for Web log, is similar to an online diary that allows for feedback from its readers.

Academic Information Technologies officials said they believe feedback is necessary for something to be considered a blog. Others, however, think it is any type of chronological text on the Web that is updated regularly.

"In my terms, it's essentially an online diary with a place for people to leave comments," said Frank Poduska, manager of the Solution Center at AIT. Mark Klein, senior in computer engineering, runs Crazylife.org, a blog-hosting Web site. He said a lot of people use blogs to keep their friends updated on what is going on in their lives.

Although the most popular use of blogs seems to be for personal use in keeping diaries or journals, blogs are being used in other ways as well.

Klein said he sees a lot of technical and political blogs, particularly during election time.

"I think that's really where a lot of this stuff is heading," he said.

Professors are also using blogs to increase communication in classes.

"I've seen some instructors keep information about their class in a blog, allowing their class to make comments and ask questions there," said Cory Arrants, system support specialist at AIT.

The popularity of blogs can be credited to numerous factors, like a chance to be heard, Arrants said. Blogs give them that freedom, he said.

The fact that anyone can be a broadcaster is appealing to many people, and blogs can update faster than most news sources, Klein said.

Joe Gandelman, a former journalist with the Christian Science Monitor who runs the blog "The Moderate Voice," said he sees the increase in blog use as a positive thing.

His site, he said, is bipartisan and features voices from across the political spectrum.

Gandelman said that when something becomes a major issue in blogs, the media takes notice, and those issues become stories.

Steve Green, who runs a blog called VodkaPundit.com, said the media also influences blog material.

"The media has a huge effect on blogs, because without the media, what do you have?" Green said.

"Mainstream media is affected by blogs in a small way, although that small way is growing."

Blogs have given people the chance to react to the media and express their opinions, Green said.

"It was bloggers who uncovered the 'Rather-Gate' memos as being fakes, it was bloggers who kept on Eason Jordan, it was bloggers who kept on the Gannon story a couple weeks ago," he said.

In late 2004, Dan Rather aired a story on CBS' 60 Minutes II about President Bush's Texas National Guard service. Bloggers on the conservative-leaning FreeRepublic.com discovered that the documents allegedly authored by Bush's commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, were forged, and pressured mainstream news to keep reporting on it.

Two more incidents earlier this month further highlighted the effect bloggers have on news outlets.

Bloggers on the liberal site DailyKos.com dug into the past of Jeff Gannon, a White House reporter who had been asking suspicious questions during press briefings.

Bloggers found out Gannon was an alias of a conservative blogger named James Guckert, who had possible connections to male prostitution.

A third incident involved comments CNN news executive Eason Jordan made while at a conference in Switzerland about U.S. troops allegedly targeting a journalist in Iraq. Jordan resigned Feb. 11.

"When you've got a couple thousand people from all over the spectrum talking about the same subject, eventually the truth will come out," Green said.

A by-product of the blog is the v-log, or video log, which allows people to do the same thing they would on a blog, but with the use of a Web camera. Unlike blogs, v-logs are not expected to catch on as quickly, at least not in the near future.

"I think it will depend a lot on Internet speed," Arrants said.