The nature of blogs
No one seems quite able to closely define what a blog is. They know when they see one, but I’ve not seen a good definition yet.
Some people say blogs have to have comments and RSS for example, but you can have that with normal articles. Several people have moaned about the various ‘top blogger’ lists (which is just a silly pissing contest anyway) including sites that aren’t really blogs.
So what makes up a blog, really?
I’m wondering if what defines a blog is more the language used and how it comes across to it’s audience than any of the specific technology used.
I quite like reading Gaping Void at times, and Hugh is unsympathetic when he comes across marketing firms who come up with the brilliant idea to create a ‘fake blog’.
And he right, in several of these cases they are ‘fake blogs’, completely fictional, not even well written in cases, but the technology is similar to ‘real blogs’, so what makes a blog fake? What makes a site that uses the same kind of technology as a blog (perhaps even uses software like Wordpress for example), but actually posts news articles for example, different to a blog?
I think most people associate blogs with a style of writing that is more personal and written by ‘a person’, rather than a site like < ahref="http://www.engadget.com/">Engadget for instance (which has comments, RSS, monthly archives, reverse chronological order posting etc…) which is more of a news reporting, less personal style of writing.
The difference between Scoble and an MS site that merely lists information and articles etc is obvious when you look at it, but I think it’s the difference in the language used that defines the difference better than the technology used.
Those fake blogs that Hugh outs at GapingVoid are generally stupid fictional stories made up by some half arsed marketing ‘professional’ who doesn’t really get it. And what they don’t get is the personalisation. That’s why English Cut has been successful IMO, because it’s a guy who knows what he’s on about, talking about what he does. How can a marketing person do that?
As Hugh said in a post a while ago, done correctly a blog is a relatively easy and cheap thing to do, marketeers don’t like that, they can’t charge lots of money for it, all you need is someone with a real interest and passion for a subject, and give them a tool to talk about it from their own personal experience.