What Is a Blog?

It's a perplexing question, when you think about it, and it gets more perplexing all the time. From a technical perspective, a blog is just a web site. Blogs tend to have certain features, but those features aren't unique to blogs, and not all blogs have them. Blogs are usually, but not always, published by individuals, but not all web sites published by individuals are blogs. Blogs are frequently-updated, but not all frequently-updated web sites are blogs. These days, blogs are not always even web sites per se--they are integrated with instant messaging, social media API's, mobile devices, and so on. Is your IM-driven Twitter stream, transmitted through your blog via RSS actually a blog when I view it on my cell phone?

The seemingly easy question of what exactly is a blog turns out to actually be pretty interesting.

And Lee and Sachi at Commoncraft have busted out a nice, basic answer. What I really like here is the focus away from technology and toward authorship, utility, and relationships. This is great stuff for a person who's unfamiliar with blogs and needs to grasp the basics:

 

 

What a great introduction to blogs! Give those two a hand.

Of course, for those familiar with blogs, it's not hard to see that there's much more to the story than Lee and Sachi included in this video. (They understand the complexities as well as anyone.)

You can see blogs as a set of conventions or features:

• Posts appear in reverse-chronological order (newest at the top of the page). Except when there's a persistent initial post or welcome page.
• People can comment on posts. Except when comments are disabled.
• Incoming links are displayed along with comments. Except when they aren't.
• There's a persistent link to an "About" page that introduces the blog and / or author(s). Except when there isn't.
• Posts are archived either by category or date. Except when they are organized by tags, or not archived at all.
• You can subscribe by RSS and / or email. Except when not.
• Blogs link to each other. Most of the time, but not always.
• A list of links to other blogs (the blogroll) is included in the margin. Usually, that is.
• Blogs are standalone sites. Unless they're integrated into a bigger site, excerpted, or aggregated.

These conventions have too many exceptions to meaningfully differentiate blogs from other kinds of web sites and services. So here's another way to look at it:

From a social architecture perspective, blogs are structured around a singular voice, even when that "voice" is multivocal and multifaceted. The voice is the container. Within that container, the individual post is the primary content object, and the secondary (comment) objects that attach to posts are important mainly as attributes of post objects.

Likewise the author or authors of a blog are secondary objects, experientially subordinate to individual posts and important mainly as attributes of posts. In other words, in the context of a blog, what you say is more important than who you are.

You can contrast that structure with the structure of social networks (Lee and Sachi have a video about this topic too), where the individual profile (or "about page") is the primary content object, and blog posts by the author are secondary content objects that are important mainly as attributes of their author. Here identity is primary, and blog posts, along with other types of secondary objects, are important mainly as attributes of identity. In other words, who you are is the thing--what you say is how you construct and transmit who you are.

For me, most of all, blogs are social. They include commenting, subscription, and trackback. You can contact the author. They are human, authentic, a little rough around the edges. If none of the above, then it ain't a blog. Architectural considerations aside, you know it when you see it. A blog is, ultimately, an aesthetic.

What do you think?

Comments

[Lee LeFever]

Hey Ryan,
I guess this is the post that came from the 10 min blogging break? (A twitter reference). Thanks a bunch for posting the video and sharing more about blogs. Cheers!