Stumbling over words: What is a blog?
When in Rome, do as the Romans do? Well, something fun - spend time with Robin Good. He caught me on digital vid for his WeblogProject. His question to me was "What is a blog?" Well, if you click on the clip, you will see me fall all over my lips and make no sense at all.
I realized while watching the clip that I probably don't have a good clear definition. Blogs still defy my full understanding. Sure, they are an easy to do, chronological set of post on a webapage. Sure they are "post centric" rather than "page centric" (Meg Hourihan via Steve Gilmore) and can be connective through links and responded to via comments. But those are all technical perspectives. I'm interested in the human, social perspectives.
What is it about this thing we call a blog that defies description in what it DOES, not what it IS? Ah, that's it. I don't really pay attention to what they are, but what possibilities they offer. I was answering the wrong question!!!
theweblogproject, RobinGood, lookingstupid
posted by Nancy White at 1:53 PM
1 Comments:
Reminds me of how hard it is to describe RSS to people! Though I think that's doable too. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things or not understanding the do/is distinction, but I tell people that a blog is a web site that's easy to add new articles to without programming knowledge, where the articles are typtically short, frequent and very connected by links.
I train people how to use blogs, rss, wikis, persistent search, etc. and I find that 5 seconds is impossible to explain things, 30 seconds will get one of them explained, a conversation can give some idea...but a demonstration makes it clear very quickly.
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