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| Noah Brier

The Real Importance of Blogging

March 15, 2005 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 4 COMMENTS

I've been working on my presentation and I got to the section of blogging. The first thing I had to do when I got there was define it. I struggled for a minute and came up with this definition:
A website that’s updated fairly constantly. Entries appear in chronological order with newest entries at the top. Can (and most often does) include comments, trackbacks and RSS.
But then I started thinking, why should it be so hard to define blogging? Can you have a website that fits those requirements that isn't a blog? I think you can, but I'm not sure.

Anyhow, after some more thought, it dawned on me, that's it's not how a blog is set up, but what's behind it that's so important. It's all about the software and the design. Blogging brings two important pieces to the net.

1. Blogs bring web-publishing to the masses. But the technology behind them is more important than what's written on them. Blog software allows users to easily publish to the web without any knowledge of HTML or other code. It’s content management software that makes the internet user friendly.

2. What blogging software does for the webpages is make them about ideas, not design.

This is a truly democratic concept. Not only does blogging software take out the need for HTML knowledge, it also takes out the need for design knowledge. Blogs are about ideas. Of course, well-designed blogs are nice, but it's the writing that sits at the core.

Things like comments only take these ideas a step further, opening up a webpage for people other than the publisher.

To me this was a huge revelation. Maybe I'm stupid and everyone knows this, but it seems like such an important distinction. Everyone talking about bloggers vs. journalists are missing the point. It doesn't matter, it's all about ideas.

This is a classic case of looking at the medium, not the message. I got so caught up in what bloggers were saying and the way they were saying it, that I missed what was going on behind the scenes.

What do you think?

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COMMENTS

1Arieanna

What is unique about blogging is that it creates conversations. It is a social tool. Most people overlook this when they latch on to blogs as the new and improved content management tool.

Blogs are all about relationships. It is an uncontrolled social network that is intertwined by trackbacks, comments, and personal, unedited content. Look at this comment. It goes back to my blog. Where you may read what I have to say about blogging as conversations, and write it into future post. See? That's the conversation.

March 15, 2005

2Noah Brier

Yeah, but that conversation is enabled by the software that runs behind it. What I'm saying is that the conversationality (is that a word?) is embedded in the software. Ease of uses helps people have conversations.

I was thinking about this exactly after I wrote this last night. I think you're absolutely right, what's truly important about blogs is the conversation that emerges. But I think that would be number three in my little list, it's an effect, not a cause.

Thanks for the feedback, though, it's funny because I really was thinking about what you said exactly last night. I'm glad you could articulate it. Thanks.

March 15, 2005

3Arieanna

I definitely agree. The conversations were not possible on websites. The technology is the medium that allows them.

March 15, 2005

4Barbara

Consider the philosophic viewpoint that everything is about relationships. Anything that expands that potential can be extraordinarily powerful.

March 16, 2005