Tuesday, June 03, 2003

What is a Blog?

design | internet | mcluhan | newsletters | paths | xml

Dave Winer posted a long draft essay trying to define a blog. Here's my take:

Blog is a term used to describe a type of web page or web site. These are some of the possible attributes:


  • The information is usually posted chronologically with a title, text and a link.

  • No special software is needed to create a blog. (Therefore, it is more difficult to define than email or a web page). The same software used to read and write a web page can be used for a blog. However, there are several software offerings which simply the publishing and often offer special features.

  • Blogs can be part of a larger web site or be an indepedent site. Because publishing on the web is very low cost (or even free), the majority of blogs are not associated with a larger web site.

  • Most blogs are written by one person, though there are group blogs. This self-publishing loses some of the journalistic review but adds a personal voice to most blogs.

  • There is a trend to distribute blogs through email and news syndication (RSS). This is starting to blur the distinction between some enewsletters and blogs.

While most blogs have very short blurbs with links to other web pages, I don't believe this is an attribute of blogs. Eric McLuhan in Electric Language: Understanding the Message points out that over time our paragraphs have gotten shorter. I think we are just seeing this trend continue with blogs and other internet writing (e.g., instant messaging).

I've been wrestling with this definition while working on bletter. I believe that the majority of blog content will be distributed in three simultaneous ways: enewsletters, syndication and the web. The emphasis on which method will depend on the content and the audience. And as we see this change, our definition of a blog will mostlikely change too.

posted by Ray @ Tuesday, June 03, 2003