Attack of the "BLOGS" (redo)

Below is a Blog entry I made this spring while I was still at VillageSoup. As much as everyone talks about blogs it still seems there are a lot of people who are confused with what a blog actually is. I've always liked this piece I wrote and thought it would be worth posting here at my new blog site.

The other day the topic of Weblogs (blogs as they are now commonly referred) came up in a discussion here at the Soup. The discussion was centered on what actually is a blog.

Some believed that a true blog is a web posting that includes links out to other webpages. Others believed that a blog is any posting on a regular basis by an individual on a specific topic. With these definitions in mind I decided to go and try to figure out the actual definition.

So how would one go about trying to accomplish this task?

First step, I used Wikipedia.com. For those that have not heard of it, this site is a free encyclopedia where users are in charge of maintaining the content.

According to Wikipedia, a blog is "a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order." The definition continues on to include everything from the history of blogs, the legal issues surrounding blogs, and much more. Ironically most wikipedia definitions are entered in a traditional blog format with links out to other webpages.

With this information in hand I decided I should google it! This search provided me with "2,060,000,000" related page results. The results included sponsored links for a number of blogging sites and free listings of related pages on the web. Interestingly the first non-paid result was a link to the Wikipedia definition page for blog.

With my Wikipedia information in hand and visits to a number of sites through my Google search I was ready to start working on my definition. But first I had to finish my normal morning readings. See each morning there are a few sites I like to check (cnn, espn, boston.com, fast company) before my day at work really gets going. I guess this is my modern day version of reading the newspaper before work.

As happens more often than not on the web, I stumbled upon information that at that time I was not searching to find. I had moved on from trying to seek a definition for a blog, I was now just reading some general business news. I was at FastCompany.com reading a blog entry review of a new site, Knover.com, built to allow users to test the theory of six degrees of separation. Talk about a distraction!

While reading about knover.com I noticed that Fast Company had an about page for their blog, FC NOW. I figured I would check and see how they defined a blog. In the second paragraph I found a link to an essay, weblogs, a history and perspective written by Rebecca Blood.

So where does all this leave us in the search for a definition of blog. If you are still with me and have not gone off on your own distraction, you will recognize that this entry is a blog in the most traditional term. It is a journal entry that provides links out to a number of other webpages. It could have just as easily been my writing of a definition based on what I had learned on all of the sites linked to in this article with out providing the links. Heck, I could have even tried to make this a vlog like I posted early in the week. But that is a distraction for another day.