by Flemming Funch
Via Dina, Debbie Well, taking a crack at defining blogging. Yes, nothing very new, but gives an idea for people who think it is strange.Blogging Is... - A form of unedited, authentic self-expression
- An instant publishing tool
- An online journal with freshly updated content
- Amateur journalism
- Something that will revolutionize the Web (think RSS feeds)
- A way to create community with your voters, er... readers (think 2,200 comments posted to the Dean for America blog in one day)
- An alternative to mainstream media (think InstaPundit by Glenn Reynolds and TalkingPointsMemo by Joshua Micah Marshall)
- A tool to teach students how to write
- A new way to communicate with customers (think Ray Ozzie, CEO of Groove Networks)
- A new form of knowledge management inside big companies
- A way for a bunch of navel-gazers to communicate with one another
- Something to keep you occupied when you’re unemployed (more people than care to admit fit into this category… have you noticed?)
- A way to think and write in short paragraphs instead of a long essay (which no one has time to read anyway)
- Your email to everyone, as A-list blogger Doc Searls puts it (i.e., a way to stay in touch with family and friends)
- A silly word that’s fun to say (“Gotta go blog now….”)
- A way of writing with a distinct voice and personality (think Halley Suitt)
- Something to talk about at cocktail parties (“I blogged Seth Godin and he blogged me back...”)
- A URL to add to your resume (as in TokyoTim, my 23-year-old son, who’s working as an English teacher in Japan for a year)
- Something else to do with your mobile phone... think audio blogging and moblogging
- Something you don’t want your mother to read: what my mother says about blogging
And, since we're on the subject Xeni Jardin has a nice article on what blogging is as well.What are weblogs? Regularly-updated websites that typically combine some mix of first-person commentary, web links, images, and news clips, and present the blend in reverse chronological order. Some are solo journals -- personal diaries open to the world; websites that function like ultra-low-budget reality TV shows where aspiring exhibitionists can document every personal detail of daily life, from boyfriends to phone bills to what they ate for breakfast. Other blogs are like collaborative online magazines that feature multiple editorial voices. Blogs can be produced by anonymous individuals with no professional writing experience just as easily as they can by career journalists or celebrity technopundits. In case anybody has missed it, "blog" is short for "weblog". It might also be called a "newslog", a "journal", or a number of other things, which might depend on what exactly you use it for.
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