What is a blog Carnival?

The idea of a blog carnival is to put a variety of related blogs on display for a casual viewer, like if they were walking through a traditional carnival. An instance of a blog carnival is a post with links to a variety of posts on other blogs all on the same topic or theme. (For example there are blog carnivals about education, birds, capitalism, and so on.) Many blog carnivals come out once a week; some are less frequent. A blog carnival post will highlight some of the more interesting posts on the carnival's topic or theme.

Part of the reason blog carnivals are called carnivals is because they sometimes move around. Like a carnival which travels from town to town, blog carnivals often go from one blogger to another, to share the work load, and to get additional exposure for the carnival.

Many viewers will check out a carnival because it is a quick way to learn about other blogs, without having to go to each of the 20 to 50 blogs in the carnival. A carnival provides an opportunity to give more exposure to a set of blogs. This is a win-win for the bloggers and for the readers. Some of the top blogs, like Instapundit, will mention every carnival they learn about. Carnivals also give bloggers a chance to see what other bloggers are saying about a given topic.

This post has some additional information about carnivals. If you know of some other good posts about blog carnivals, please add a comment.

Some examples of carnivals which are related to the Carnival of Homsechooling are the Carnival of Education and the Carnival of Unschooling.

If you want to see some of the variety of carnivals, check out this list and this list.