Five years ago, I wrote an essay about my love/hate relationship with weblogs. In the end, I decided I didn’t care what people called it so long as they were using their voices and speaking their minds. Then I asked others to post their definitions of what a blog was. Their answers ran the gamut from pedestrian to profound (to profane).
Since then, a lot has changed. “Blog” has become a well known term, embraced by the mainstream. The format, and what it means to use it, has evolved as well. And yet I still bump into people all the time who have no idea what it means.
One thing I’ve noticed is that those who blog, and those who do not, often have very different interpretations of what the word means. So, with the power of Say-So, I’m asking the question again: What the hell is a weblog?
But this time I’m asking you to do something a little different: self-categorize. If you’re a blogger (meaning you have a site that you post to on a semi-regular basis that you call a “blog”), answer to the left. If you’re not (meaning you do not have a site that you post to on a semi-regular basis that you call a “blog”), answer to the right. Let’s see if the two sides have different things to say.
Thanks for playing!
BLOG = Web = and intricate network of lines of communication + Log = a ‘written’ record of communication sent and/or received
A blog is the opportunity for one or more persons to send ripples (or waves) down those open lines of communication towards a chosen group of people in an environment where techonlogy has largely removed the middle man.
Obvioulsy this has limited use in an non-computer literate society. In a literate society this may or may not be a good thing.
I hold a somewhat anesthetized view of the definition: a weblog is an open ended group of content chunks with identifiable author and date. It seems to me that the blogs that stand out over time have not just an identifiable author by name, but an identifiable “voice” that cuts through all the paragraphs of text.
While I consider myself deeply infected with blog (definition: I’ve found myself encouraging others to blog), and have been posting for five years, I still don’t “get” the more personal blogs. Even with those that have a very active comments, many seem like the text equivalent of watching someone with a fake microphone “addressing an audience” while looking in the mirror. And maybe I’m not alone, in the last couple years my netnewswire has filled up with hundreds of blogs that sit well for me in the balance between too personal and too general.
Also, a shout-out to bump, answer #7 to your original query, who encouraged me to start blogging.
When we all just had “home pages” and “journals” or even “online diaries” (pre ‘96 or so), I didn’t really give it much thought. I read other people’s “sites”. Some had date-based archives of either links or thoughts and others did not. I had a daily diary, inspired by many other daily diaries, but I gave up sometime in ‘96 due to the tedious hand-coding. I was re-inspired to blog by SuperOG Blogger Robert (bump.net) and Jack Saturn (saturn.org). When that happened, there was a word for what we were doing.
A friend of mine’s company had a software package called “Press Release Management Tool” back in ‘95. It was exactly Blogger, but they marketed it to Fortune 500 companies to manage, well, press releases and they made a pretty good killing with it. During those frothy-with-bubbles days, content by individuals, for individuals, was so tiny and seemed in peril with the mass comercialization going on in the web. Nobody valued the “small” nodes on the ‘net back then.
I remember talking to Diana Dougan in San Francisco in ‘98 and telling her that I thought the end of individual voices on the web was near.
But right around that time, a sort of “scene” emerged. All of these journals, or sites, or whatever you want to call them became referential and suddenly much more dynamic. Whereas a few people updated all the time, suddenly, there was the ability for people to update all the time. Quickly. Easily. The tools began to arrive and vanquished having to remember to use P and other tags when trying to express oneself in written language. And the voices flourished.
To me, that’s what a blog is. It’s a site that broadcasts communication while receiving in kind. Feedback, links, interconnected-ness (for lack of a better word). And to that end, Say-So is a blog.
To me, it’s not a blog if it doesn’t allow for return communication. It’s just press releases. (note: please don’t think I mean to imply that people like Dooce should enable comments to be a blog. Her site definitely is a journal, and a great one at that, and she responds to her readership and links to other sites/blogs. Unfortunately, people are hateful and, especially in the case of toward women, mean-sprited. In short: comments are good when they are constructive).
And speaking of the really OG blog stuff, does anyone know where Amelia Wilson is? She had a blog before there were “blogs” that was really good and a site about Gargoyles.
Notice how verbose the “blogger” side is ;)
A blog is a semi-regular collection of posts of words, pictures, videos (anything, really), that is often organized chronologically in some fashion (whether that be chronologically, reverse chronologically, etc.). A blog may have one or multiple authors, and often it permits comments and coversations on the individual posts.
whatever you want it to be. Blogs are made up of individual posts that are archived, becoming part of a stream of information. They are usually grouped either by author, date, or subject. The best blogs are those in which individual posts can stand on their own, yet when put together become more than the sum of their parts. The process of publishing online invites a certain amount of interaction with readers. Incoming and outgoing links connect the blog to the rest of the web. This loose format becomes the basis of what is widely accepted as a blog. Blogs evolve over time. Although I started blogging to update family and friends on what was happening in my life, my blog has evolved into something much more. It is a record of my life, serving as a creative outlet for me right now and preserving stories and photos for my children in the future.
A new written medium where you post things in the old manner of messages in the bottle. Only, you can also tell your friends (and hapless strangers) to check the message out.
A website with content posted in chronological order. Or reverse chronological order. Can be personal, but not necessary. Feedback mechanisms (comments, tags, forum, email links) don’t have to be built-in or present.
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a blog is a way to publish your thoughts/opinions/comments on a particular topic on the web and possibly invite comments by other people on your opinion.
A blog is an online journal that a person or organization can post their thoughts, ideas, opinions, etc. for people to read. Some can be written by lonely people for lonely people, others by regular people for regular people.
I think one of the most nauseating is Dooce.com.
I agree with what the other two above me have written…
A means of regularly transmitting opinion and/or expertise (with a presumption of bias). I read several knitting blogs and they represent: yarn and pattern reviews; advice on techniques; fundraisers for worthy causes; leads on good prices on supplies; all in a chatty, preferably humorous, format.
I enjoy reading some primarily personal blogs (such as Dooce); however, they do remind me of the “family” wall concept in Farenheit 451.
Most weblogs are a cry for help.
Blogs suck because after the first 10 post the crap that started it is so far down it isn’t worth wasting your time over because talking is soooooooo much faster so get a life not a blog ;) peace out
just another personal website except now you have tools/sites such as blogger, moveable type, textpattern, squarespace, etc. that makes setting up sites so damn easy that everyone from your newborn to your blind old granddad can have their own website. i’m from the old school where we use to have to do the entire site by hand on ms-notepad and verifying pages on netscape or god forbid mosaic!!
Personal space on the internet where you can invite all sorts of people .
Blog is a trendy word.
My tagcloud for blogging : opinion exhibitionism influence community reciprocity journalism provocation energy
..A chronological display of posts, like a digital diary. Like real diaries, none is the same!
Thanks for stating this loud and clear!
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