Monday, August 21, 2006

What is a Blog?

Interesting discussion going on in the BlogSphere as to what constitutes a Blog? Are there various categories of Blogs? Public, Private (Corporate & Personal)?.. If its a private Blog, then is it a Blog? Is there a officially accepted definition?

Robert Scoble sets out the following criteria which Jeff Sandquist disagrees.
1) Easy to do reverse-chronological content display. Type in a box and hit publish. New stuff goes at the top of the page. Old stuff moves down.
2) Discoverable. Through search engines
3) Social. I can track when you link to me from another domain, either through search engines, through trackbacks, or through my referrer logs.
4) Permalinkable. I can send you a link directly to a post.
5) Syndicatable. I can use a news aggregator to read your content, which lets me read a lot more Blogs.
My two cents:
Whether it is open or restricted, A Blog is something that exhibits the above characteristics.

Now, what do you call private blogs? (ie., public Blogs that are restricted)? That seems to be the point of contention between Jeff & Robert.

What's your take?

4 comments:

  1. Blog is a medium of publication hereto before was not accessible to common man. Any one who has access to computer and internet can publish anything they want that will appease their emotion, motivation, knowledge, and skill.

    Blog takes away the exclusiveness that news papers, magazines, tv and radio broadcasts enjoyed.

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  2. Gossip!

    Age old human need to be recognized.

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  3. Exile from the real world..

    That's an interesting spin.. but I agree with the 'to be recognized' part..

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  4. Raman

    Blog is challenging the MSM.. but still has ways to go..

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