What's different about blogs
[Note: Fellow bloggers will find the following to be obvious. I'm posting it here for people I've encountered who don't know anything at all about blogs. Those who do can skip this post.]
There appears to have been some confusion in the past on what a "blog" is. I've seen the term used incorrectly to describe any user-submitted content on the web, and that's not technically correct. "Blog" has a very unique format and is different from things like forums, article driven sites, message boards, or comments sections. I thought I'd clear the air and post something about blogging as I'm a big fan of it and encourage people to write blogs about their interests.
Rather than explaining all the things a blog is not, let's focus on what a blog is. A blog (short for web log) is a chronological, typically reverse chronological, log of content. That's purposely ambiguous because once you have that basic idea down the varieties start. Back in the day, blogs were simple link logs that people put up linking to favorite web pages with a short commentary about them. In recent years that has expanded to longer journal-like posts of text and pictures, or just pictures, or just some other media content. Spin-off names have been created as well, like "vlog" for video logs, but they're all basically the same format. Chronological logs of content. That's different from other formats on the web because it is strictly linear by definition.
So what's a blog good for? Many people keep them as online journals, logging their life. Some still keep link logs, but they're typically longer posts than before. Some blogs are short utterances. Twitter, for example, is a service that forces 128 character descriptions of what you're doing at any given moment. It's more for the kids. There's a huge variety in blogging. If there's any way to apply a chronological log to something on the web, you'll find a blog for it. Is blogging some new fangled hippy term just for the kids? Heck no, older folks use blogs all the time. They use them for political rants, religious discussions, family photos, and so on. Remember, if there's a reason to log it, there's a reason to blog it.
There appears to have been some confusion in the past on what a "blog" is. I've seen the term used incorrectly to describe any user-submitted content on the web, and that's not technically correct. "Blog" has a very unique format and is different from things like forums, article driven sites, message boards, or comments sections. I thought I'd clear the air and post something about blogging as I'm a big fan of it and encourage people to write blogs about their interests.
Rather than explaining all the things a blog is not, let's focus on what a blog is. A blog (short for web log) is a chronological, typically reverse chronological, log of content. That's purposely ambiguous because once you have that basic idea down the varieties start. Back in the day, blogs were simple link logs that people put up linking to favorite web pages with a short commentary about them. In recent years that has expanded to longer journal-like posts of text and pictures, or just pictures, or just some other media content. Spin-off names have been created as well, like "vlog" for video logs, but they're all basically the same format. Chronological logs of content. That's different from other formats on the web because it is strictly linear by definition.
So what's a blog good for? Many people keep them as online journals, logging their life. Some still keep link logs, but they're typically longer posts than before. Some blogs are short utterances. Twitter, for example, is a service that forces 128 character descriptions of what you're doing at any given moment. It's more for the kids. There's a huge variety in blogging. If there's any way to apply a chronological log to something on the web, you'll find a blog for it. Is blogging some new fangled hippy term just for the kids? Heck no, older folks use blogs all the time. They use them for political rants, religious discussions, family photos, and so on. Remember, if there's a reason to log it, there's a reason to blog it.
Labels: blogs
posted by Jeremy at
12:27 PM
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