Joho the Blog
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June 10, 2003
David Winer is hugging Tony Perkins. Also on the panel: Rebecca Lieb of internet.com and Jason Shellen of Blogger, who are not hugging. This is a panel where the Experts answer our questions. "Do people blog just to say they're blogging?" Surprisingly, Rebecca says yes. Jason replies that it takes staying power to blog for a long time. "What is a blog?" Dave: It's the style, not the technical features. It's in the unedited voice of the individual. But even that rule can be broken, e.g., group blogs like BoingBoing. But there's a long list of best practices. Jason Shellen: It consists of posts. Harrumph.com. Rebecca: "A business blog is an unofficial means of addressing a defined agenda." An individual and honest voice. An open loop. Tony: He quotes Dave Winer. Dave urges him to give all of AlwaysOn's members their own blog. Tony says they do, but they're disagreeing (again) over what a blog is. Now we're fighting again over Tony's use/coopting of the word. The crowd is generally tired of the topic. I'm not, although this is no longer the right place to pursue it. For me, the issue is that we — the Blogosphere — have built something special, post by post, day by day. Tony is misappropriating our work for his own purposes. I have nothing against his purposes — I hope AlwaysOnline succeeds — but having him misuse and abuse the term "blog" makes it harder for us to explain what is special about the world we've built together. It harms the growth of blogging. IMO. Tony wraps up by acknowledging that AlwaysOn isn't a blog. "You can sense it." But he wants to help us expand beyond our "cult." Sure, but Tony should listen about what makes blogs blogs, IMO. Dave is enlisting Tony in Dave's project of giving a blog to everyone in New Hampshire in order to affect the 2004 presidential election. Posted
by D. Weinberger at June 10, 2003 05:12 PM
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Comments
Q: What is a blog?
A: Why do you ask?
Q: You mean like, am I coder or a sociologist or a philosopher?
A: No. That's still ambiguity parading as precision. Tell me what /problem/ you are trying to solve by asking that question. Then I'll know what the stakes involved in answering the question are, and whether asking the question is the right way to solve your problem.
Posted by: Alex | June 11, 2003 01:56 AM
hi,You've got
fantastik
destructive
grat, very preeettttty blog.....
I don"t undrstant a load of verb, because i from pooand, but it":s fine.....buahahaghaha!
by, by
Posted by: kate | June 11, 2003 03:36 AM
I find it ironic that the "real webloggers" (whoever that is) reclaim the term "weblog". If I remember correctly it was the makers of weblog software and other A-list webloggers who diluted the term "weblog" from the beginning. They called every site that was made with weblog software a weblog to prove that weblogs are the next big thing. Meanwhile it looks like a site is a weblog if it fits into the picture a "real weblogger" wants to paint and otherwise it is not. For example, they count journal sites with sex stories as weblogs because they are in Iran and, hence, relevant, but when a journalist writes that weblogs are like diaries they say he doesn't get the net.
Posted by: kris | June 11, 2003 08:31 AM
Kris, there's much truth in what you say. And the right response is, I think, Alex's above. Questions get asked in a context and with a purpose. If someone hasn't heard the term "blog" before and asks "What is a blog?," it's not such a tough question to answer: you look at Winer and Doc's blogs and you say, "See, it's where an individual writes everyday in her/his own voice, with lots of links, reverse chron, etc." But at the WBS blogging conference, the question was a political one, along the lines: "Do I have permission to market my site as a leading blog site just because I allow comments/letters-to-the-editor while retaining ownership rights over the writings of those I'm publishing?"
So, yes, there is an irony. And more than that: if you want to claim that blogging includes just about every personal expression (not a position I hold, by the way), then you can't exclude AlwaysOn. But the WBS kerfuffle wasn't about semantics. It was about the actual effect on the blogosphere of AO claiming, from its substantial pulpit, that it's a blog.
I actually don't think it's a big deal. But Tony did a keynote, so how could the live bloggage not engage the issue?
Posted by: dweinberger | June 11, 2003 08:55 AM
Great comments guys. Peter FDA
Posted by: Peter | November 6, 2003 07:56 PM
wish you luck and joy..
Posted by: Gina Lee | September 21, 2004 04:57 AM
I like your site.It's great being here..
Posted by: Chrissy Jene | September 21, 2004 04:59 AM
The "what is a blog" debate continues. I offer my own attempt and share historical context starting at the Jupiter 2003 conference and continuing on 31 December 2006 with a series of posts about whether Google's blog is a blog.
Posted by: Jordan Frank | February 27, 2007 03:15 PM