Update: Mike, in my comments, thinks my headline is sensationalistic and says he didn’t say they aren’t blogs. We disagree on what a blog is, which is what this whole post is about so I changed it to say that I said that half of all Live Spaces aren’t blogs.
Mike Torres of the Live Spaces team just said that more than half of all Live Spaces are private. Um, Mike, you DO realize that private Web spaces are NOT blogs, right?
In a ThinkWeek paper, accepted by Bill Gates, and discussed with him before MSN even started publishing Spaces (more than two years ago), we (not just me, but MS researchers too) defined blogging as having five things:
1) Easy to do reverse-chronilogical 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 (I listed Google, Technorati, MSN, Yahoo, and a few others). I specifically mentioned a ping server as infrastructure too, ala Technorati or Weblogs.com. IE, blogs are public. I would go as far as saying that a site that does not ping a pingserver, like weblogs.com, is NOT a blog (private Web sites don’t ping weblogs.com and are NOT discoverable by search engines).
3) Social. I can track when you link to me from another domain, either through search engines, through trackbacks, or through my referer logs. (I can’t be social with private cross-domain spaces).
4) Permalinkable. I can send you a link directly to a post. (I can’t do that with private spaces).
5) Syndicatable. I can use a news aggregator to read your content, which lets me read a lot more blogs. (I can’t do that with private spaces).
So, half of all Live Spaces are NOT blogs. They are something else. How about we make up a name for them? “Plogs.” Not to mention but “blogs” got their name from Pyra’s Blogger, which complies with all these things.
I feel so strongly about this stuff that we put this into our book as a common definition of why Blogging is hot. If your tool or service doesn’t comply with all five of these things it might be very cool (and there might be a LOT of them) but you shouldn’t be able to claim that they are blogs.
Scobleizer 
Just because you wrote it in a Think Week paper, doesn’t mean it’s a fact. Sorry.
It’s the same as it not being fact just because Microsoft Marketing/PR defines it a certain way.
You are just talking about different things, and that’s OK. Whatever. There are more important things to worry about!
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Just because you wrote it in a Think Week paper, doesn’t mean it’s a fact. Sorry.
It’s the same as it not being fact just because Microsoft Marketing/PR defines it a certain way.
You are just talking about different things, and that’s OK. Whatever. There are more important things to worry about!
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Your definition is way too narrow methinks.
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Your definition is way too narrow methinks.
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BTW, this title is sensationalistic and something I wouldn’t expect from you. I said they are “private” – I didn’t say they “aren’t blogs”.
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BTW, this title is sensationalistic and something I wouldn’t expect from you. I said they are “private” – I didn’t say they “aren’t blogs”.
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Mike: in my book private spaces ARE NOT blogs.
But, I should have disclaimed that you believe they are. I thought that was clear by linking to your original comment. And, everyone can certainly see your rebuttal here.
Jamie: if you’re going to say something like that then you need to explain where the definition is wrong.
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Mike: in my book private spaces ARE NOT blogs.
But, I should have disclaimed that you believe they are. I thought that was clear by linking to your original comment. And, everyone can certainly see your rebuttal here.
Jamie: if you’re going to say something like that then you need to explain where the definition is wrong.
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I’m having real trouble with this idea that private blogs are not blogs. I can see that you define them that way but don’t get all puffy if others disagree.
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I’m having real trouble with this idea that private blogs are not blogs. I can see that you define them that way but don’t get all puffy if others disagree.
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I agree with Torres. Just because a blog doesn’t fit Scoble’s definition of a blog doesn’t mean it is not a blog. (I’m reminded of the folk back in the 80’s who defined “workstation” as a device running Unix. Of course, at Digital, we thought we had wonderful “workstations” that ran VMS.) If discoverability via Google, MSN, etc. were a requirement to be a “blog” then what the heck do you call all the Intranet based “blogs” in enterprises?
The scope of discoverability should not be part of the definition of a blog. A private blog that I share with my friends and family is just as much a blog as it would be if I shared exactly the same system with the entire world. You might want to distinguish between a “public blog” and a “private blog” — but to say that a thing is only a blog if it is public is not useful.
bob wyman
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News to me. I have more than a couple of private blogs. Blogs that only a handful of people have a password for.
And what about people that use things like Flickr as a photoblog?
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I agree with Torres. Just because a blog doesn’t fit Scoble’s definition of a blog doesn’t mean it is not a blog. (I’m reminded of the folk back in the 80’s who defined “workstation” as a device running Unix. Of course, at Digital, we thought we had wonderful “workstations” that ran VMS.) If discoverability via Google, MSN, etc. were a requirement to be a “blog” then what the heck do you call all the Intranet based “blogs” in enterprises?
The scope of discoverability should not be part of the definition of a blog. A private blog that I share with my friends and family is just as much a blog as it would be if I shared exactly the same system with the entire world. You might want to distinguish between a “public blog” and a “private blog” — but to say that a thing is only a blog if it is public is not useful.
bob wyman
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News to me. I have more than a couple of private blogs. Blogs that only a handful of people have a password for.
And what about people that use things like Flickr as a photoblog?
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Alfred: well, when you claim you have the most of something then you gotta use a term everyone agrees on, and can verify.
So, you’re saying that — in your book — blogging is just reverse chronilogical text?
In my book I TOTALLY disagree.
But reminds me of the joke about how a Microsoft employee changes a lightbulb: he doesn’t, just redefines darkness as light.
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Alfred: well, when you claim you have the most of something then you gotta use a term everyone agrees on, and can verify.
So, you’re saying that — in your book — blogging is just reverse chronilogical text?
In my book I TOTALLY disagree.
But reminds me of the joke about how a Microsoft employee changes a lightbulb: he doesn’t, just redefines darkness as light.
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Michel: photo blog is the same as private blog. Different from just plain old “blog.”
A video blog is different yet again.
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Michel: photo blog is the same as private blog. Different from just plain old “blog.”
A video blog is different yet again.
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As far as I can see the word blog comes from weblog, which is an online diary or log.
Who is to say what the parameters of that should be? Certainly not any individual.
I can write a blog to my own server that I can access from anywhere, and not let a soul see it. Thats still a blog to me, though at the other extreme to your definition.
For instance, the syndication point is ridiculous. Maybe I dont want it to be syndicatable. Maybe I just want to periodically edit a plain HTML page periodically for my friends to keep tabs on whats happening in my life. No links for each post. No syndication. Yet That isnt a blog?
Come on now…
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As far as I can see the word blog comes from weblog, which is an online diary or log.
Who is to say what the parameters of that should be? Certainly not any individual.
I can write a blog to my own server that I can access from anywhere, and not let a soul see it. Thats still a blog to me, though at the other extreme to your definition.
For instance, the syndication point is ridiculous. Maybe I dont want it to be syndicatable. Maybe I just want to periodically edit a plain HTML page periodically for my friends to keep tabs on whats happening in my life. No links for each post. No syndication. Yet That isnt a blog?
Come on now…
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But, it doesn’t matter. No one other than program managers care about such things. Users don’t. Especially if they are just using Live Spaces to get a cute icon on their name in an instant messenger.
Advertisers don’t. They go for audiences and blogs that are private and blogs that just have one post don’t gather as interesting an audience as, say, something like Boing Boing.
It just is a way for Microsoft to be taken seriously even when most of the “blog elite” totally ignore its services.
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But, it doesn’t matter. No one other than program managers care about such things. Users don’t. Especially if they are just using Live Spaces to get a cute icon on their name in an instant messenger.
Advertisers don’t. They go for audiences and blogs that are private and blogs that just have one post don’t gather as interesting an audience as, say, something like Boing Boing.
It just is a way for Microsoft to be taken seriously even when most of the “blog elite” totally ignore its services.
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Jamie: to me, it’s not a blog.
But, that’s just me. I guess you think a blog is just reverse chronilogical text.
Well, if that’s all that Blogger had (or Manila, which was very popular in the late 1990s) or Moveable Type, or, even Live Spaces, had no one would have started a blog.
Certainly when we look at a “modern, 2006” blog, in general, if it doesn’t have a feed, doesn’t have permalinks, isn’t available to Google or MSN or Yahoo, we’d say “that’s not a blog.”
But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.
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Jamie: to me, it’s not a blog.
But, that’s just me. I guess you think a blog is just reverse chronilogical text.
Well, if that’s all that Blogger had (or Manila, which was very popular in the late 1990s) or Moveable Type, or, even Live Spaces, had no one would have started a blog.
Certainly when we look at a “modern, 2006” blog, in general, if it doesn’t have a feed, doesn’t have permalinks, isn’t available to Google or MSN or Yahoo, we’d say “that’s not a blog.”
But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.
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Mike Torres: I updated the headline and post to reflect that YOU didn’t say they weren’t blogs.
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Mike Torres: I updated the headline and post to reflect that YOU didn’t say they weren’t blogs.
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I’d have to agree with most the others, public/private, syndicated or not does not define a blog. There are millions of blogs you/I/public can’t get at but they are still blogs.
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I’d have to agree with most the others, public/private, syndicated or not does not define a blog. There are millions of blogs you/I/public can’t get at but they are still blogs.
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I think pretty much any online publication that lets the readers post comments counts as a blog. Maybe we should vote on this, now that would be funny. The International Astronomical Union is currently taking a vote on the definition of “planet” and I’m sure the space nuts are just as nutty as the blog nuts.
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I think pretty much any online publication that lets the readers post comments counts as a blog. Maybe we should vote on this, now that would be funny. The International Astronomical Union is currently taking a vote on the definition of “planet” and I’m sure the space nuts are just as nutty as the blog nuts.
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If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?
Robert, when does a blog become a blog? If I have created what I think is a new blog and I post an entry, yet my blog has not yet been discovered by Google, MSN, etc. is it still a blog? Or, does it become a blog only when one of the search engines discovers it? Is it enough for only one search engine to find it or is there some critical mass of search engines that must locate it?
If, for some reason, the search engines erroneously decide that I’ve created a Splog, not a blog, and thus don’t index my blog, is it a “blog?” (i.e. it is discoverable, but those that have discovered it have ignored it…) Is “blog-ness” related more to the behaviour of search engines than it is to my intent as a publisher?
Also, we had many “blogs” back in the day before RSS and Atom become common and before we had aggregators. How could the definition of “blog” depend on a technology and practice that became common *after* blogging was defined? When did “syndicateable” become a requirement for being a blog? Are the things that we used to call blogs no longer blogs? If not, what should we call what we called a blog before we had RSS and Atom?
One reason we’re sensitive about the need for permalinks in blogs today is because it used to be that the things we started calling blogs many years ago often didn’t offer permalinks. As we learned how to do blogging better, we started to expect permalinks. But, just as feeds came after blogs, permalinks became an expectation *after* we started talking about blogging. Thus, permalinks *cannot* be part of the definition of what a blog is.
I could go on… The basic point is that most of your “required” attributes are, in fact, very desirable attributes for a “blog” but they are not essential to being a blog. Perhaps you want to create a concept of a “modern blog” or something like that. But, your list doesn’t apply to all blogs.
bob wyman
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If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?
Robert, when does a blog become a blog? If I have created what I think is a new blog and I post an entry, yet my blog has not yet been discovered by Google, MSN, etc. is it still a blog? Or, does it become a blog only when one of the search engines discovers it? Is it enough for only one search engine to find it or is there some critical mass of search engines that must locate it?
If, for some reason, the search engines erroneously decide that I’ve created a Splog, not a blog, and thus don’t index my blog, is it a “blog?” (i.e. it is discoverable, but those that have discovered it have ignored it…) Is “blog-ness” related more to the behaviour of search engines than it is to my intent as a publisher?
Also, we had many “blogs” back in the day before RSS and Atom become common and before we had aggregators. How could the definition of “blog” depend on a technology and practice that became common *after* blogging was defined? When did “syndicateable” become a requirement for being a blog? Are the things that we used to call blogs no longer blogs? If not, what should we call what we called a blog before we had RSS and Atom?
One reason we’re sensitive about the need for permalinks in blogs today is because it used to be that the things we started calling blogs many years ago often didn’t offer permalinks. As we learned how to do blogging better, we started to expect permalinks. But, just as feeds came after blogs, permalinks became an expectation *after* we started talking about blogging. Thus, permalinks *cannot* be part of the definition of what a blog is.
I could go on… The basic point is that most of your “required” attributes are, in fact, very desirable attributes for a “blog” but they are not essential to being a blog. Perhaps you want to create a concept of a “modern blog” or something like that. But, your list doesn’t apply to all blogs.
bob wyman
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I’ve gotta agree with the majority of commenters. Just because a blog isn’t discoverable (as you describe that term) doesn’t mean it’s not a blog. I’m pretty sure people would describe Xanga sites or password-protected LiveJournal diaries as blogs.
I don’t have a copy of “Naked Conversations”, but (if not ‘blogs’) what term did you use to describe blogs behind the firewall?
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I’ve gotta agree with the majority of commenters. Just because a blog isn’t discoverable (as you describe that term) doesn’t mean it’s not a blog. I’m pretty sure people would describe Xanga sites or password-protected LiveJournal diaries as blogs.
I don’t have a copy of “Naked Conversations”, but (if not ‘blogs’) what term did you use to describe blogs behind the firewall?
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
Robert, reality check. How many millions of people read your book? I didn’t.
How many millions of people have weblogs that you don’t think are weblogs? I’ve had what I would now call a weblog since, oh, 1995. I’ve only switched to weblog software, womments, trackbacks, yada yada, around 2000.
I know of quite a number of photoblogs that are just as interesting and tell just as interesting a story as any number of “text blogs”.
Your trying to decree what a proper weblog is, is like trying to define what a painting is.
Some weblogs are not reverse-chronological.
A lot of weblogs are not discoverable, neither via search engines nor via pings.
Loads of weblogs don’t do trackbacks.
Some weblogs, shame on them, are not, or not easily permalinkable.
Me? I don’t know what a weblog is. If I had to choose one vital aspect I’d choose the syndication. But there are (good) weblogs out there that don’t have a feed, either by choice or not.
And, conversely: there are abominations that follow all “your” rules and that are not blogs. Blatant marketing things, splogs, you know the things I’m talking about.
So I think it’s like art really. You can’t put your fnger on it. You may have a couple of guidelines, but in the end it’s always going to be a case of “I can’t define what it is, but I knowit when I see it”.
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
Robert, reality check. How many millions of people read your book? I didn’t.
How many millions of people have weblogs that you don’t think are weblogs? I’ve had what I would now call a weblog since, oh, 1995. I’ve only switched to weblog software, womments, trackbacks, yada yada, around 2000.
I know of quite a number of photoblogs that are just as interesting and tell just as interesting a story as any number of “text blogs”.
Your trying to decree what a proper weblog is, is like trying to define what a painting is.
Some weblogs are not reverse-chronological.
A lot of weblogs are not discoverable, neither via search engines nor via pings.
Loads of weblogs don’t do trackbacks.
Some weblogs, shame on them, are not, or not easily permalinkable.
Me? I don’t know what a weblog is. If I had to choose one vital aspect I’d choose the syndication. But there are (good) weblogs out there that don’t have a feed, either by choice or not.
And, conversely: there are abominations that follow all “your” rules and that are not blogs. Blatant marketing things, splogs, you know the things I’m talking about.
So I think it’s like art really. You can’t put your fnger on it. You may have a couple of guidelines, but in the end it’s always going to be a case of “I can’t define what it is, but I knowit when I see it”.
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
Robert, reality check. How many millions of people read your book? I didn’t.
How many millions of people have weblogs that you don’t think are weblogs? I’ve had what I would now call a weblog since, oh, 1995. I’ve only switched to weblog software, womments, trackbacks, yada yada, around 2000.
I know of quite a number of photoblogs that are just as interesting and tell just as interesting a story as any number of “text blogs”.
Your trying to decree what a proper weblog is, is like trying to define what a painting is.
Some weblogs are not reverse-chronological.
A lot of weblogs are not discoverable, neither via search engines nor via pings.
Loads of weblogs don’t do trackbacks.
Some weblogs, shame on them, are not, or not easily permalinkable.
Me? I don’t know what a weblog is. If I had to choose one vital aspect I’d choose the syndication. But there are (good) weblogs out there that don’t have a feed, either by choice or not.
And, conversely: there are abominations that follow all “your” rules and that are not blogs. Blatant marketing things, splogs, you know the things I’m talking about.
So I think it’s like art really. You can’t put your fnger on it. You may have a couple of guidelines, but in the end it’s always going to be a case of “I can’t define what it is, but I knowit when I see it”.
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Is a Live Journal a blog? What if I can make some posts available to a select audience and others available to the world?
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Is a Live Journal a blog? What if I can make some posts available to a select audience and others available to the world?
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Is a Live Journal a blog? What if I can make some posts available to a select audience and others available to the world?
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Noam: some Live Journals ARE blogs, but a lot of Live Journaling doesn’t fit into blogging. Oh, and the founder of Live Journal and I had a public disagreement about this back in 2002. So, this argument is nothing new. 🙂
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Noam: some Live Journals ARE blogs, but a lot of Live Journaling doesn’t fit into blogging. Oh, and the founder of Live Journal and I had a public disagreement about this back in 2002. So, this argument is nothing new. 🙂
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Noam: some Live Journals ARE blogs, but a lot of Live Journaling doesn’t fit into blogging. Oh, and the founder of Live Journal and I had a public disagreement about this back in 2002. So, this argument is nothing new. 🙂
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
Ah, what a crazy world it would be if the act of publishing something made it true!
It’s never too late to argue about the definition. Otherwise, why would you have posted this to your “blog” (if in fact it IS a blog)? If it was too late to argue about it, you wouldn’t have bothered.
Reading your disclaimer in the right margin, I see you don’t guarantee “the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here,” so I take that as an admission that you could be wrong. 😉
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
Ah, what a crazy world it would be if the act of publishing something made it true!
It’s never too late to argue about the definition. Otherwise, why would you have posted this to your “blog” (if in fact it IS a blog)? If it was too late to argue about it, you wouldn’t have bothered.
Reading your disclaimer in the right margin, I see you don’t guarantee “the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here,” so I take that as an admission that you could be wrong. 😉
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
Ah, what a crazy world it would be if the act of publishing something made it true!
It’s never too late to argue about the definition. Otherwise, why would you have posted this to your “blog” (if in fact it IS a blog)? If it was too late to argue about it, you wouldn’t have bothered.
Reading your disclaimer in the right margin, I see you don’t guarantee “the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here,” so I take that as an admission that you could be wrong. 😉
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Using your logic [or lack thereof] it seems that an internal blog hosted on MovableType isn’t a blog since I can’t find it in Technorati.
Yeah, right.
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Using your logic [or lack thereof] it seems that an internal blog hosted on MovableType isn’t a blog since I can’t find it in Technorati.
Yeah, right.
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Using your logic [or lack thereof] it seems that an internal blog hosted on MovableType isn’t a blog since I can’t find it in Technorati.
Yeah, right.
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Dare, I don’t count that as a generic “blog.” When someone says to me “I blogged today” that means I can get to it from the public Internet.
When people do things internally at Microsoft they would tell me “I posted to my internal blog” or “I posted to my private blog.”
So, I guess I’m gonna lose this one if you wanna say those are the same as a regular old blog.
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Dare, I don’t count that as a generic “blog.” When someone says to me “I blogged today” that means I can get to it from the public Internet.
When people do things internally at Microsoft they would tell me “I posted to my internal blog” or “I posted to my private blog.”
So, I guess I’m gonna lose this one if you wanna say those are the same as a regular old blog.
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Dare, I don’t count that as a generic “blog.” When someone says to me “I blogged today” that means I can get to it from the public Internet.
When people do things internally at Microsoft they would tell me “I posted to my internal blog” or “I posted to my private blog.”
So, I guess I’m gonna lose this one if you wanna say those are the same as a regular old blog.
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
hubris? Lets face it, most (if not all) of the comments on this site are against your point of view. When it comes to definitions of words, almost always the majority rules. Why not just make a distinction between “public blog” and “private blog” and call it a day.
It seems that you despair that almost anything can and will be defined as a blog (just as many pro-webdesigners don’t like how 9 year olds who can’t tell black from blue call themselves ‘webdesigners). This is a reasonable fear but i don’t see any way around it.
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“But, I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
hubris? Lets face it, most (if not all) of the comments on this site are against your point of view. When it comes to definitions of words, almost always the majority rules. Why not just make a distinction between “public blog” and “private blog” and call it a day.
It seems that you despair that almost anything can and will be defined as a blog (just as many pro-webdesigners don’t like how 9 year olds who can’t tell black from blue call themselves ‘webdesigners). This is a reasonable fear but i don’t see any way around it.
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This is really a silly argument.
There are plenty of intranet blogs that serve the exact same purpase as an external blog, and they are both called “blogs”. It’s not “private” just like not everything that goes on inside a corporation is “private”. It’s just restricted to a particular audience.
Definitions, regardless of who defined them, aren’t static things you know.
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This is really a silly argument.
There are plenty of intranet blogs that serve the exact same purpase as an external blog, and they are both called “blogs”. It’s not “private” just like not everything that goes on inside a corporation is “private”. It’s just restricted to a particular audience.
Definitions, regardless of who defined them, aren’t static things you know.
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Robert- agree with Dare here. Blogs inside corporate firewalls can’t be blogs by your definition. The SharePoint team, and Movable Type, will obviously disagree.
On the Spaces front, I think there is an argument to be made that the private Spaces lessen the quality of the blogging overall, but I wouldn’t argue that Spaces blogs can’t be counted for those reasons. IMHO, your argument should focus on which is the most active blogging platform/community and not the definition of what a blog is.
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Robert- agree with Dare here. Blogs inside corporate firewalls can’t be blogs by your definition. The SharePoint team, and Movable Type, will obviously disagree.
On the Spaces front, I think there is an argument to be made that the private Spaces lessen the quality of the blogging overall, but I wouldn’t argue that Spaces blogs can’t be counted for those reasons. IMHO, your argument should focus on which is the most active blogging platform/community and not the definition of what a blog is.
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> Pyra’s Blogger, which complies with all these things.
Blogger allows user to publish to a site via FTP. There’s no guarantee that that site is publicly accessible. I know this because I have a Blogger blog that is not publicly accessible. Oops, I called it a blog. What should I call it? I want to inform Blogger support that their terminology is wrong.
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> Pyra’s Blogger, which complies with all these things.
Blogger allows user to publish to a site via FTP. There’s no guarantee that that site is publicly accessible. I know this because I have a Blogger blog that is not publicly accessible. Oops, I called it a blog. What should I call it? I want to inform Blogger support that their terminology is wrong.
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Bah. There’s no official definition of a weblog, and I cringe whenever someone insists that “anything that isn’t X is not a blog.”
If you want to control the definition, make up your own word. Otherwise you’re stuck with the words “blog” and “weblog”, which are gradually being defined by the people of the world, many of whom disagree with you.
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Bah. There’s no official definition of a weblog, and I cringe whenever someone insists that “anything that isn’t X is not a blog.”
If you want to control the definition, make up your own word. Otherwise you’re stuck with the words “blog” and “weblog”, which are gradually being defined by the people of the world, many of whom disagree with you.
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“I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
WOW. You should tape yourself saying that and play it back over and over just to hear what an incredible ass you sound like.
Out of the hundreds of millions of people on the internet, how many do you think care about your book?
Why don’t you put up a poll somewhere and ask if things can be a blog if they don’t meet your royal highness’s 5 aspects? Right now it looks like not even any of your own readers agrees with you, I’d place money on you getting taken to the cleaners if this were ever put to a vote.
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“I wrote the book and we put that definition in there and no one argued with it when it became the best-selling blogging book. So, too late to argue the definition now.”
WOW. You should tape yourself saying that and play it back over and over just to hear what an incredible ass you sound like.
Out of the hundreds of millions of people on the internet, how many do you think care about your book?
Why don’t you put up a poll somewhere and ask if things can be a blog if they don’t meet your royal highness’s 5 aspects? Right now it looks like not even any of your own readers agrees with you, I’d place money on you getting taken to the cleaners if this were ever put to a vote.
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You are just talking about different things, and that’s OK. Whatever. There are more important things to worry about!
Unless of course, you guys are giving a presentation and claiming you are the BIGGEST BLOG PUBLISHER on the planet. Then , of course, its the most important thing, right?
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You are just talking about different things, and that’s OK. Whatever. There are more important things to worry about!
Unless of course, you guys are giving a presentation and claiming you are the BIGGEST BLOG PUBLISHER on the planet. Then , of course, its the most important thing, right?
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Oh, and Robert, Amazon already took ‘Plog’! 😀
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Oh, and Robert, Amazon already took ‘Plog’! 😀
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Totoro – I’m sorry, I didn’t give that presentation.
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Totoro – I’m sorry, I didn’t give that presentation.
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There’s an old’ish definition up on diarist.net (http://www.diarist.net/guide/blogjournal.shtml) about what a blog is:
“A weblog (sometimes called a blog or a newspage or a filter) is a webpage where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger, or a pre-surfer) ‘logs’ all the other webpages she finds interesting.”
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There’s an old’ish definition up on diarist.net (http://www.diarist.net/guide/blogjournal.shtml) about what a blog is:
“A weblog (sometimes called a blog or a newspage or a filter) is a webpage where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger, or a pre-surfer) ‘logs’ all the other webpages she finds interesting.”
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Scoble- you can try to define METRICS on what makes a *good* blog, a *readable* blog, a *popular* blog… but Mirriam Webster will always be a more authoratative source for the definition:
Blog: Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.
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Scoble- you can try to define METRICS on what makes a *good* blog, a *readable* blog, a *popular* blog… but Mirriam Webster will always be a more authoratative source for the definition:
Blog: Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.
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Quite a few LiveJournals are friends-only. What’s with the public-access obsession? Friends-only sounds very social to me. It seems like you’re entering a semantics minefield with all the biases of an “A list blogger”. I consider your blog’s layout antiseptic and its participation features weak. But you’re a blog and my active mostly-photos friends-only livejournal isn’t? Sure, fine. Define it however you want. Metrics do matter but I don’t know if all these limitations are useful to understanding the whole blogosphere.
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Quite a few LiveJournals are friends-only. What’s with the public-access obsession? Friends-only sounds very social to me. It seems like you’re entering a semantics minefield with all the biases of an “A list blogger”. I consider your blog’s layout antiseptic and its participation features weak. But you’re a blog and my active mostly-photos friends-only livejournal isn’t? Sure, fine. Define it however you want. Metrics do matter but I don’t know if all these limitations are useful to understanding the whole blogosphere.
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I use the phrase “intlog” to describe any of the internal (private) weblogs running behind the firewall and “weblog” for anything beyond the firewall designed for public consumption.
Its a pain to have an the internal server – but the stuff on the intlogs are private – I don’t want them appearing in Technorati or Google – so the trade off is worth it.
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I use the phrase “intlog” to describe any of the internal (private) weblogs running behind the firewall and “weblog” for anything beyond the firewall designed for public consumption.
Its a pain to have an the internal server – but the stuff on the intlogs are private – I don’t want them appearing in Technorati or Google – so the trade off is worth it.
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>>What’s with the public-access obsession?
Because a blog is for the Web and only public blogs add value to all of our lives (private blogs add value to only some of our lives).
But, I’m gonna lose this argument.
I’m with DRK, though. I like calling private blogs exactly that. “Private blogs.” That denotes something different from “blogs.”
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>>What’s with the public-access obsession?
Because a blog is for the Web and only public blogs add value to all of our lives (private blogs add value to only some of our lives).
But, I’m gonna lose this argument.
I’m with DRK, though. I like calling private blogs exactly that. “Private blogs.” That denotes something different from “blogs.”
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Robert…I had a chronological diary/log on hanklynch.com back in ’97 or ’98 before trackbacks, permalinks etc were even common, might not have even been around. I didn’t call it a blog, but that’s probably because the word wasn’t invented yet(?) Me thinks this is just to start a ruckas as well.
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Robert…I had a chronological diary/log on hanklynch.com back in ’97 or ’98 before trackbacks, permalinks etc were even common, might not have even been around. I didn’t call it a blog, but that’s probably because the word wasn’t invented yet(?) Me thinks this is just to start a ruckas as well.
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Robert is simply doing focus group research here. By posting this he is getting more information about what people think and feel than any traditional focus group.
And he doesn’t even have to buy sandwiches and sodas for everyone.
This is a common technique of bloggers, writers, and I guess you could say a 6th thing that ‘blogs’ do these days. The more riled up the commentors get, the better information gathering Robert gets. When people disagree, they talk more.
The specifics of the arguments here don’t really matter, it’s the market research that is the most important.
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Robert is simply doing focus group research here. By posting this he is getting more information about what people think and feel than any traditional focus group.
And he doesn’t even have to buy sandwiches and sodas for everyone.
This is a common technique of bloggers, writers, and I guess you could say a 6th thing that ‘blogs’ do these days. The more riled up the commentors get, the better information gathering Robert gets. When people disagree, they talk more.
The specifics of the arguments here don’t really matter, it’s the market research that is the most important.
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It seems Robert´s internet celebrity ego has begun to mess with his mind. Please get off your papier maché throne and reconsider your words.
Blogging may be a hot ticket these days, but I believe it´s just a fad, possibly elevated to a higher social realm, but ultimately its impact on the greater scheme of things is minimal. You may wish/desire/hope that blogging becomes even more mainstream and popular, thus increasing your notoriety, but blogs will probably become as common as email in the near future.
2006 is the year blogging became fashionable, and your attempts at creating a separation between “WE the elite” and common folk are futile.
Enjoy the party while it lasts. The novelty will soon wear off and the general public will see blogging for what it is. In the past some people nurtured their paper journals, collecting photos, scraps, scribbling notes and anecdotes. How many do this today apart from probably teenage girls? I predict the same will happen with blogs.
Milk it as much as you can while it lasts Robert. Your obnoxious laughter will soon die down.
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It seems Robert´s internet celebrity ego has begun to mess with his mind. Please get off your papier maché throne and reconsider your words.
Blogging may be a hot ticket these days, but I believe it´s just a fad, possibly elevated to a higher social realm, but ultimately its impact on the greater scheme of things is minimal. You may wish/desire/hope that blogging becomes even more mainstream and popular, thus increasing your notoriety, but blogs will probably become as common as email in the near future.
2006 is the year blogging became fashionable, and your attempts at creating a separation between “WE the elite” and common folk are futile.
Enjoy the party while it lasts. The novelty will soon wear off and the general public will see blogging for what it is. In the past some people nurtured their paper journals, collecting photos, scraps, scribbling notes and anecdotes. How many do this today apart from probably teenage girls? I predict the same will happen with blogs.
Milk it as much as you can while it lasts Robert. Your obnoxious laughter will soon die down.
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I predict an upcoming post.
“How to Lose a Blargument Gracefully.”
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I predict an upcoming post.
“How to Lose a Blargument Gracefully.”
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In 1999, when blogging first really started to take off, many people made many posts just like this one that tried to define what blogging was, and what it wasn’t. And they all resulted in comment threads just like this. And we all got very upset and it was all very important.
It’s nice to know we’ve come so far since then.
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In 1999, when blogging first really started to take off, many people made many posts just like this one that tried to define what blogging was, and what it wasn’t. And they all resulted in comment threads just like this. And we all got very upset and it was all very important.
It’s nice to know we’ve come so far since then.
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So scoble acc. to your definition this is a blog for you
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
but I see it as just a noticeboard which announces things.
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So scoble acc. to your definition this is a blog for you
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
but I see it as just a noticeboard which announces things.
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This dude is wacked, blog, smog, get a freaking life.
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This dude is wacked, blog, smog, get a freaking life.
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I dont know if are or aren’t blogs, but several friends have msn spaces just for post pictures …
saludos!
Mario
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I dont know if are or aren’t blogs, but several friends have msn spaces just for post pictures …
saludos!
Mario
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I tried looking this up in Robert’s book, but it’s not publicly accessible from my house. Therefore, it is not a book.
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I tried looking this up in Robert’s book, but it’s not publicly accessible from my house. Therefore, it is not a book.
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Ike: there’s one rule to blogging now: don’t dare define what a blog is or we’ll pound your behind and tape you to a tree!
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Ike: there’s one rule to blogging now: don’t dare define what a blog is or we’ll pound your behind and tape you to a tree!
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So because you decided that you like blogs that have X, Y, and Z, if they don’t have that, they aren’t blogs. Just the way that you decide that if a website doesn’t provide a full text feed, it isn’t worth reading.
You’ve really discovered the fastest way possible to prove that your opinion is worthless; namely, decreeing matters of taste as universal law. You do this all the time.
Working for Microsoft does not give you the right to define the terms for the rest of us. Writing a blogging book that nobody objects to at the time it became a bestseller STILL doesn’t give you the right to define any terms. If every single person at Microsoft agreed that an Apple is an Orange, and if you wrote a bestselling book that defined an Apple as an Orange, and nobody objected to it, that still would not make an Apple an Orange. Your opinions are not adopted into law unless somebody objects.
Get over yourself, Scoble.
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So because you decided that you like blogs that have X, Y, and Z, if they don’t have that, they aren’t blogs. Just the way that you decide that if a website doesn’t provide a full text feed, it isn’t worth reading.
You’ve really discovered the fastest way possible to prove that your opinion is worthless; namely, decreeing matters of taste as universal law. You do this all the time.
Working for Microsoft does not give you the right to define the terms for the rest of us. Writing a blogging book that nobody objects to at the time it became a bestseller STILL doesn’t give you the right to define any terms. If every single person at Microsoft agreed that an Apple is an Orange, and if you wrote a bestselling book that defined an Apple as an Orange, and nobody objected to it, that still would not make an Apple an Orange. Your opinions are not adopted into law unless somebody objects.
Get over yourself, Scoble.
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Thanks for the comment and the article. I use Coastal Impressions for all my printing and direct mail. They do a great job.
http://coastalimpressions.com/
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Thanks for the comment and the article. I use Coastal Impressions for all my printing and direct mail. They do a great job.
http://coastalimpressions.com/
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