defining a blog

I just read the following over at Iggy’s:

Somebody was once asked to define blogs. They refused and said:

I
don’t care. There is no need to define “blog.” I doubt there ever was
such a call to define “newspaper” or “television” or “radio” or “book”
— or, for that matter, “telephone” or “instant messenger.” A blog is
merely a tool that lets you do anything from change the world to share
your shopping list. People will use it however they wish. And it is way
too soon in the invention of uses for this tool to limit it with a set
definition. That’s why I resist even calling it a medium; it is a means
of sharing information and also of interacting: It’s more about
conversation than content… so far. I think it is equally tiresome and
useless to argue about whether blogs are journalism, for journalism is
not limited by the tool or medium or person used in the act. Blogs are
whatever they want to be. Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining
“blog” is a fool’s errand.

Iggy agrees, and so do I.

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24 thoughts on “defining a blog”

  3. I started mine as a form of therapy. I tend to hold things in and over time that can get unhealthy. It was also difficult for me to express myself openly face to face but easy in writting and posting. So feel free to add “a form of therapy” to the list.
    I’ve also learned, from you Wil, that blogs are also book material. 😉 Hey! Now I can say “I learned it by watching you!”
    Now I’m off to try and find a linux distro that will let me create a floppy, stick it in the laptop, boot-up, and install over the ‘net. Wish me luck.

  4. I think that despite the enormous numbers of geeks and Internet users, there’s a larger number of people alienated from technology that are desperately trying to understand life in the 21st century by 20th century terminology. So the computer is like a TV with a typewriter attached to it; the Internet is like adding a phone and a fax; and the perverts look at nekkid boobies on it!
    Anything not clearly labeled is a variable, an “X” factor, a mystery and it terrifies the masses. (These are people that turn to the news because a talking head alternately tells them that wine might kill, prolong their life, prolong their sex lives, save their hair from falling, or be the best. Diet. Ever…)
    Remember the baby boomers who flaunted convention? They just changed their minds: “Conform and define yourselves, you little terrorists!”

  5. I like this theory, especially the part about blogs being ‘conversations’ vs. ‘content’. Many people take blogs literally and, often, too personally. Trevor and I have had more fights over misread / mistranslated emails than anything and I guess blogs face similar challenges, judging by the multiple-blogger wars that flame up.

  6. The definition of a blog is pretty simple. It’s a tool or series of tools by which a writer updates a website for others to read (what we used to call “one-to-many writing” in the days of apas and zines). The definition of “blogger” is equally simple – a writer who uses blogs for his or her one-to-many writing. Everything else is just niggling.

  10. Haha, that kind of reminds me of a quote by Stephen Hawking when asked what his IQ was…”People who worry about their IQ are losers”…seemingly irrelevant, but things are what they are, whether they are labeled or not!

  11. I’m constantly asked to categorize my blog. Just the name alone puts me in the all too cute category of “mommy blogger” (Pronounce mommy with a high pitch on the O and with four or five extra M’s.)
    I don’t want to be known as a mommy blogger, despite the housewife title I give myself. While my kids really are cute and ever so endearing to me, I don’t expect the internet (re)public to feel the same. I know, I know, a couple posts in the past few days deal with my kids, and there is a picture of a kitten too, but I’m not a mommy blogger! Dammit!
    Frankly, I just want to be funny…and an attention whore. Is that so wrong?

  12. Wil,
    You may want to replace the quotes in the above with " tags. They show up kinda funny otherwise in some browsers.

  13. Well, now, wait a minute. I’m with you and Iggy on the conversation and medium comments, but journalism?
    To my understanding, journalism _does_ have some constraints that blogging does not. Journalism, even freed from traditionally imposed limitations of newsprint and 6:30PM timeslots is less immediate and emotional, less opinionated, more rigorously checked, etc. If blogging is conversation, journalism is a more formal response to one question at a time. I think the things that separate successful documentary films from unsuccessful ones are some of the same things that separate bad blogs from good, and good blogs from journalism.

  14. I agree that blogs are hard to define. I started one for my family and friends to catch up on what our family is doing. It also quickly became a kind of scrapbook for myself in the future. I found myself entering recipes on the blog, just so I could retrieve it later with a nice picture of the paella or braised ribs I made. Then I found that sometimes I just needed to write – write political viewpoints, vampire movie reviews, my plans to get more organized or about how the death of one of my patients and the birth of twins in my practice on the same day affected me. It was good stuff, but I realized that it was inapprpriate for my “Here’s what’s happening with the kids” blog. So, I started a new one just for me. I don’t know if anyone will read it amongst the millions that are out there, and right now I don’t care. I journal some in a moleskine, but this medium feels more permenant, even though its just a few blips out in cyperspace. If my house goes up in a blaze, my moleskine and my laptop are toast. But my blogs will live on. Here’s hoping the blogspot servers don’t choke:)

  15. Basically, my blogs are just my place to bitch about things that are going on in my worthless excuse for a life.
    As far as I know, only one person reads it and has enough courtesy to indulge me with replies, which kind of makes me wonder what the fucking point of writing in them is, in the first place.
    My definition of my blogs? Just another faceless loser on the net complaining about the shallow world around them. Nowhere nearly as interesting or as profound as yours, Wil, not by any stretch of the imagination.

  20. But blogging did have some affects on traditional journalism, even though most of the blogs now on news sites are editorial blogs. Speaking as a wannabe journalist/actress/trained monkey, it’s a great way to get out what couldn’t be said in the thirty second spot that you had to condense everything into. I generally use blog when referring to more news-y events. Mine, I just call a web journal. Because there’s nothing sacred about it-just random bitchings and that sort of thing.
    -nolagirl

  21. Sorry about the shamless self promition 🙁
    I think blogs are fun to read but only a few people can see them. I only have only 1 comment and made about 20 postings on mine. I dont need the whole world to see and I dont want to be a journalist either, I just want a few people to read what I have to say

  22. I agree blogging _changed_ journalism, mostly by challenging its response time, but most blogs are _not_ journalism, because they are equal parts reporting, memoir, speculation, and rant.

  24. The Perils of Blogging

    I first started blogging on August 17, 2004 . I didn’t really know what I would write, and I didn’t really know if anyone would read what I write. I’m still not convinced of the latter. I’ve only gotten less than a half-dozen comments on my blog, excludi

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