Go ahead, define "Blog"
Go ahead, define "Blog"
How exactly do we define the word, BLOG?
Shall we ask our friends? No, that will end up with as many
definitions as we have friends. Do we look at what recognized
valid sources might say? Hmm, just what is a "recognized , valid, source?" With that as as guiding search light we night get into that foofaraw over whether or not a blog is a form of journalism, which is certainly not today's topic. That's fodder for another entry another day.
Should we look it up in the dictionary? Well, that might
work, except that the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary by my desk is
over 20 years old, and blogs are a more recent addition to the lexicon.
Do we make like the NY
Times, and refer to blog as a shorthand terminology for "web logs, a
personal journal website kept on the internet." Note: that's from memory; the
Times probably is wordier and more sterile, clinical, and standoffish. But let's also give credit where due: David Pogue, an excellent writer who can be read every Thursday in the Times' Circuits Section,
knows what a blog is, and even refers to blogs as blogs. So do
William Safire, Maureen Dowd, and a number of the other Op-Ed
writers. But the Times remains rather stodgy, taking an official
sort of brick'n'mortar position.
Odd, isn't it? After all, the Times just bought the very popular blog-like site, About.com, and enlisted consultant and New Media uber blogger Jeff Jarvis
over to help provide them with some newtech guidance. That seems like a win-win proposition if ever there was one!
Sooner or later maybe the Times will define blogs as blogs. Hope
so, anyway.
So let's look around for some web-based definitions. Do we go with dictionary.com? Here's a screenshot from looking it up over there:
are relatively similar, and the second one addresses a good many blogs:
those that are purely linkfests, with little --sometime zero-- original
content or prose other than the links.
Peculiar though those may seem, personal experience has proven many of
those link-for-alls to be heavy referrer sites to this very space. Go
figure!
of definitions seem to better define the differenct sorts of blogs, and
do address business blogging, media blogging (that's where I categorize
the campaign and political blogs). But it also seemed more like
getting a sense of things, like smelling a cinnamon bun but not quite
like getting a bite of the real thing.
crisper definition, more on the mark, I Googled the word blog.
Ignoring the top listing, in what looked like a paid position, I
clicked on the second hit. This is a good one, from marketingterms.com:
question honestly . . . gee, sorta kinda, somewhat, maybe . . .
well, the bottom line answer to that question is this: NOPE!
They come close, they loosely define some of the blogs out there,
correctly and exactly define some of the others. Yet there exists
a wide array of blogs of all kinds, too grand and vast a variety of
types to fit into a neatly packaged all-encompasing definition.
There's so much more! Blogs that do not fit any of the
definitions above -- business blogs of all sorts, Customer Service
blogs that have replaced the old BBS-type sites -- creative uses of
blogware to develop all sorts of sites. Blogging and blogaware
have evolved into content management approaches. Yes, I know,
some people (bloggers, mostly!)
shudder at the use of words like content, or the phrase content
management -- but what else to call entries such as this?
Content, indeed, it is.
These "slack phrases" need not be perceived as demeaning. Then
again, I also fall into the camp that still refers to consumers and
customers. Readers, visitors, users of the medium . . .
whatever one calls them, there are all sorts of blogs and blog-like
sites out there for them.
In tomorrow's entry we will look at a variety of blogs -- all very different, yet all fitting the umbrella description, "blogs."
