Word of the Week -- NANOPUBLISHING
Golden Bay
low-cost online publishing which uses techniques based on blogging
(writing weblogs) to target a specific audience
nanopublisher noun [C]
nanopublished adjective
The word NANOPUBLISHING was coined by Jeff Jarvis, creative director of
the US company Advance Publications Inc. Jarvis first used the term
after being shown Gawker, a New York media gossip weblog launched by
Nick Denton in December 2002. The prefix nano- is derived from the
Greek word nanos, meaning 'dwarf', and is used figuratively in the word
to denote the idea of 'publishing on an extremely small scale'. An
alternative term incorporating the same idea is thin media.
The term WEBLOG first came into general recognition in 1997. The
original use of its shortened form BLOG is thought to be attributed to
Californian Peter Merholz, who in May 1999 posted the following in his
weblog: 'For What It's Worth: I've decided to pronounce the word
"weblog" as wee-blog. Or "blog" for short.' Blog was immediately
adopted as a noun, and as a verb meaning 'to write weblogs', and gained
currency when later in the same year the web publishing tool Blogger
was launched by Pyra Labs, a dotcom that was bought by Google in 2003.
The term blogger subsequently came into general use as a reference to
'someone who writes weblogs.'
E.g.:
'Nanopublishing will not replace magazine publishing or mass media. It
is a new opportunity. It won't make money for political punditry or for
the diaries of college students. But it will work for gadgets and sex
and special interests such as disease -- imagine a great weblog for
diabetics -- because it is so cheap to publish.'
(The Guardian, 30th January 2003)
'Nanopublisher Nick Denton is apparently making cash from his sites
...'
(livejournal.com, 26th November 2004)