-
Website
http://www.scobleizer.com/ -
Original page
http://scobleizer.com/2006/08/20/torres-says-half-of-all-live-spaces-arent-blogs/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
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!
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.
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
And what about people that use things like Flickr as a photoblog?
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.
A video blog is different yet again.
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...
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.
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.
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
I don't have a copy of "Naked Conversations", but (if not 'blogs') what term did you use to describe blogs behind the firewall?
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".
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. ;-)
Yeah, right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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."
Blog: Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.
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.
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."
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.
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.
"How to Lose a Blargument Gracefully."
It's nice to know we've come so far since then.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
but I see it as just a noticeboard which announces things.
saludos!
Mario
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.
http://coastalimpressions.com/