Aug
13
What is a blog?
It’s such a simple question but the definition of what a blog is keeps changing. Is it a diary of one’s personal musings? Is it a repository of info with tips and suggestions? Is it a corporate branding tool? Thanks to the almost non-existent barrier to entry, today anyone with access to the internet can have a blog. As a result, a blog can be any or all of those things.
As part of a group blogging project over at Daily Blog Tips, Daniel Scocco suggested we give our own definition of what a blog is.
If I had to define what a blog is now, in 2008, I’d say that blogs are an early 21st-century version of the public town square. Humans have always had a need for social contact and for information and blogs provide a platform for both. A few short years ago the mainstream media used to mock blogs, dismissing them as a passing fad. But blogs, particularly politics and technology blogs, have risen to the top and many have become the first stop in the search for news, opinion and insight. It’s been an astonishing turn around. Newspapers, in particular, have been slow to tap the potential of blogs and it’s definitely been to their detriment. A friend of mine, who covers the television industry for a major U.S. newspaper, says his bosses are stunned to see the level of web traffic his radio and television blog is bringing to the paper’s web site. In fact, he gets more reaction and feedback from readers of his entertainment news blog than he does from the articles that get published in the newspaper.
What’s your general opinion of blogs? Are they serving a public good or just adding to the overall media noise? If you blog yourself, how would you define what a blog is? Willing to make any predictions on where blogs, as a whole, are headed?
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