The Hype on Links [1]
In yesterday's entry the discussion of links has no mention of the different manners and methods of linking available to bloggers, as well as other electronic web-accessible pointers. Links can exist in distributed documents (e-mail, FTP, attachments). Links can be to pictures, to stored documents, to sites, to anchor-linked specific text loci in any number of linked items. One can link to a posted article, to a posted or stored document, to a specific spot in an articel or posted document.
Links enable the writer to offer support, reference, suggestion, or expanded description. Links empower the reader in a similar manner. The reader may make the choice: to click on the link, to ignore the link; to make a mental (or other) note to check it out at some other time.
Blogrolls are a collection of links. Not all blogrolls are exclusively populated by blogs. A link can be the equivalent to an immediate footnote or citation. A link can simply be food for thought.
To retiterate the nitty gritty as per yesterday's post: just as one cannot give an absolute and singular definition of just what makes a blog a blog ... neither can one create hard and fast rules for linking, or characterize all links in one simple definition.
Let The Gathering of Bloggers Begin!
And so it begins. I remain in New York tonight. Work and family obligations kept me here. At a family dinner this evening in NYC I thought about the assemblage of Bloggers, at a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge. Made me eager to get there on Sunday.
Tomorrow is going to be a full day, as we have plans to be in Manhattan for a while, and then as I start the drive to Providence the Yankee-Twins ALDS game will keep me company in the car. A night with friends in Providence, then off again early Sunday morning it is. Destination: BloggerCon, Cambridge, MASS.
BLOGS: WHO? WHAT? WHY?
Who is a blogger, what is a blog or a blogger, why does one blog . . . these are discussion topics that have been making the rounds a great deal of late, particularly as BloggerCon has drawn nearer. There are some high-minded answers, some answers with incredible attitude and politics, some dreamy and philosophical answers, as well.
Any and every answer to these questions that presents itself as an absolute is, to be blunt: totally wrong. Sure, there may be some technical characteristics that apply to all blogs, but certainly no definitive answers are valid with regard to why bloggers choose to blog, or what exactly is a blog.
Think of the differences among blogs. There are personal journals, of many types. Some are little more than diaries, others are of specific subject focus There are blogs like DeanLand, where I use the platform as though it were my own column. Blogger as columnist, in this case. I perceive the net as filling a place in distributed communications (aka: media) that is different from the Newspaper or Magazine model. Also different from Radio and Television. The ability to link, to edit (even after the date of original post), to exponentially expand via threaded ongoing discussion, adds an electric and immediate, interactive quality to the weblog experience that is different from, say, websites as extensions of more traditional media. Many web sites (not blogs) exist that are redundant by design, serving an existing entity as a supplement. CNNís website [2] is a good example of this.
Some redundant websites use other means to expand the baseline entity, such as ESPN. ESPN as a group of channels available on cable or satellite is the mothership, the baseline entity. ESPN has a magazine, giving it a presence in the print medium. There is a radio network, as well. ESPN on the web [3] is both redundant, supplemental, as well as having excellent content which is more than extension of the brand, it is expansion of service and creates an additional medium for the bigger picture entity (brand?) that is ESPN.
But ESPN on the web is not blogging. The addition of blogs would be a worthy enhancement of the ESPN web experience. It would supplement and expand the existing web entity as well as the overall brand that is ESPN.
Roland Tanglao [4] seems to have some very forward-thinking ideas on uses of blogs in environments other than the simply the personal journal or diary. I hope to catch up with Roland on Sunday in Cambridge.
Businesses can use blogs as an internal information distribution and discussion system. The larger the company, the greater the need for more internal blogs. These could focus on specific areas, disciplines, or departments. This takes the concept of e-mail distribution and puts into an immediately dynamic and interactive mode.
Different types of enterprises can approach the blogging concept in ways that are specific to their business. Creative departments can have jam sessions or brainstorm, telecommuting via a blog. The constraints of time zones and work schedules are almost completely bypassed, made non-issues by virtue of the timelessness of the net. The blog persists; it remains in hyperspace. It is a continuum of sorts. And there, in blogspace, the entries are time-stamped, the process advances without the restrictions of geography, time zones, office space, or the need for contributors/participants (be they lurkers or posters) to be in the same place at the same time.
Executive level blogs do much the same as described above, with a certain degree of prior efficiency. Blogging as a conversation or discussion tool, not hampered by geography or meeting schedules, allows collaboration and growthful exploration. More than just allowing it, the dynamic of the discussion threads encourage growth of information (data, opinion, emergent thinking) and the entire business dynamic.
After Sunday at BloggerCon, most likely there will be a bunch more to discuss on these topics.
Note to BloggerCon attendees: see you there. Letís talk!