What is blog and blogging?
Absurd as it seems, I think this is worth exploring, even if
you’ve been doing it for a while already. We all have our conceptions about it,
and you’d be surprised at how many ways there are to look at it. So humor me as
I go over some various ways we understand what blogging is. Add your own ideas
in the comments.
The fact that the writing takes place on a blog makes it
different than other forms of writing. How do you know it’s a blog? Articles,
called posts, are listed in reverse chronological order. Each post has its own
unique web page address called a Permalink. Posts usually (but not always)
allow readers to leave comments. Writing in any other environment which lacks
these “bloggy” characteristics is not blogging. Blogging must be done on a
blog, or using blog software of some kind. This is the most technical
definition of what is blogging, and it’s an obvious one, but it’s not the only
one.
Separate from the technical definition of writing on a blog,
we can also define blogging by trying to identify its spirit. Regardless of any
other purpose the writing may have: to inform, to teach, to entertain, to
provoke, whatever—authentic writing is held by many as an
ideal associated with blogging. There is plenty of authentic writing found in
places which are not blogs, but it’s my completely unscientific observation
that the majority of authentic writing I have read on
the web has been on blogs.
It’s a Dialogue, Not
a Monologue
In the days before the Internet, if you wanted
dialogue, you met someone face-to-face, or you chatted on the phone (land
line), or you corresponded via post or telegram. That was about it. There was
nothing else. When you write a blog post, people can leave comments and even reply to
each other in the comments, as though it were a miniature forum just for that
post (which it is). People can tweet and retweet your post. They can
link to it on Facebook, Delicious, and a million other sites. They can have
conversations about it in Google Buzz or other social sites. They can write
their own blog posts in response to your blog post. In other words, they
can talk back to you and they can talk to each other, and they can do this even
if you didn’t allow comments on your blog.
And while it’s true that this dialogue and cross-communication
can happen around non-blog content, it almost always happens around blog
content specifically.
It’s Writing for
Others, Not Yourself
Even though early blogs really were, in a sense, “online
diaries,” the paradox is that a blog written to satisfy oneself is nearly
always worthless to others. A blog written to satisfy others will nearly always
satisfy oneself. Funny how that works, no? Blogging may appear to be
writing about oneself, but only if
doing that is beneficial to others. In other words,
there’s a lesson to learned from a blogger’s personal story. The personal is
the universal, and the more personal it is, the more universally it applies.
Again, it’s a paradox.
It’s Beyond Writing
Blogging is not just writing. It can include images,
audio, video, slideshows, ebooks, and all other
manner of what we call “embedded media.” Blogging does not even have to include
words: a blog post can have only pictures, for example. You could even choose
to not have a headline (although I wouldn’t recommend that). Since part of the
definition of blogging is technically as a digital publishing platform, the
mechanics of publication on the web don’t care about the medium. That part’s up
to us. Do it regularly and you got yourself a podcast. Blogging is beyond
writing.
It’s Everything
Or at least, it seems like it. Blogging is now what
television used to be. It’s what newspapers used to be. It’s what magazines
used to be. It’s what books used to be. Granted, right now, all these other
media are still in use, and perhaps they always will be within our lifetimes,
but don’t you think it’s interesting how almost any form of traditional media
has been transmogrified somewhere by someone into the “new thing.” It’s like
the entire world is being slowly converted to digital, whether we like it or
not. Opportunity exists at the edges of this digitalization.
It’s Nothing
At the end of the day, blogging is still just a tool, a
method, a means. It’s a channel, a conduit, a facilitator. Without people, it’s
nothing. And people will still be here and still have that primal need for
contact even if blogging didn’t exist. Blogging is not a replacement for human
relationships. It does not automatically confer a winning mindset or happiness
to its practitioners. Its existence means nothing, does nothing. What we do
with it? That’s what matters. If I had a choice between taking a storytelling
class and a blogging class, I’d take a storytelling class, no question about
it.
Over to you. These are not the only ways to describe
blogging. What is blogging… to you?
Something
About Google Blogger
Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user
blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are
hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010
Blogger allowed users to publish blogs on other hosts, via FTP. All such blogs
had (or still have) to be moved to Google's own servers, with domains other
than blogspot.com allowed via custom URLs.
As
part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google
Account were migrated to Google servers. Blogger claims that the service is now
more reliable because of the quality of the servers.
Along
with the migration to Google
servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading
permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore, blogs are
updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.
In
a version of the service called Blogger in Draft, new features are tested
before being released to all users. New features are discussed in the service's
official blog.
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