This is a website

I envision dozens of blogs ;) scrambling to link to this post within the next 24 hours...

...which is the ultimate irony I agree. Get out your hankies.

This is my take, from a few weeks back, in 14 lines. I've been getting so frustrated with the whole weblog format, but it's whatever we (as webloggers) make of it.

I personally hate the term "blog" if we were to group ourselves under a term why couldn’t it be cool like "Superfly Sitez" or something .. blog seems so .. blob.

Your right too .. because your more likely to get an answer to a question of a "superfly site" than a "lame-o-corporate" site.

I don't really see the problem as I think it's merely an addition. Weblogs are in the first place websites, and then they're 'blogs on top of that. These new services — that only appear to index weblogs — are not replacing anything: weblogs are indexed by "regular" searchengines and by these specific weblog services on top of that. When a website gets labeled as 'blog, there's nothing and nobody that's going to say it's no longer a website, or stop treating it as such — it becomes both.

I saw a "story" on on NBC's The Today Show. If I was Joe Sixpack or Grandma Moses watching the Matt and Katie show while I munched my seven grain toast in the morning, I would have been led to believe that a blog was secretive type of website operated by sixteen year old girls for the purpose of spewing malicious slander against the classmate who "dissed" them in the cafeteria last week, pulling a quick one over their parents via specialized slang that can only be interpreted with some sort of Secret Decoder Ring that expires at the age of 19 and proclaiming their sexual prowess to panting teenage boys who are typing with one hand and IM-ing on their new fangled cell phones with the other.

No mention of the politicians, corporations, professional publications or independents who use their own blogs for the purpose of eliciting or expelling meaningful and useful information. The whole problem, of course, is the word "blog." As soon as a title is applied, a subgroup is created, which must be dissected, examined, understood, repackaged and distributed by a multinational corporation (like Microsoft) to that demographic which needs to feel hip and connected by affiliating itself with whatever is fresh, new, happening and now. Just wait. As soon as you hear the word "blog" on a sitcom, you can be assured that the distribution has begun. This is the breaking of the Seventh Seal.

What does a website do? It expels and/or gathers information. What does a weblog do? It expels and/or gathers information. Like you said, "blog" is synonymous with website. It's all the same thing.

Dave (and Todd) are straight-up right. I've always avoided the term myself. And how do you explain it to your relatives when they hardly grasp the concept of a website alone?

And now we talk about "moblogging" and other such (perhaps somewhat novel, but...) obscurely categorized web existences.

In the end, software such as MT has made it easier for us to keep up with friends and family, spout off about our opinions, and gather feedback from the general populace... But this is basically what a news or corporate website does as well.

The power is simply now in the people's hands.

But Todd's right, lumping everyone into "blogger" status potentially will cheapen the message and stereotype the author.

Seems like there's a couple of different issues here.

In my eyes, the further "blogs" are specialized, talked about, obsessed over, cross-linked, badged with community emblems, and have utilities built especially for them, the more they are removed from mainstream sources of information.

This is a good point. I've never called my site a blog. I will call it a weblog with great reluctance. I generally refer to kottke.org as my "site". I agree that many people are missing the point about what makes blogs so great. Sites like zefrank or The Morning News aren't blogs, but they are special in the same way that blogs are. An imperfect way to say this is that blogs aren't great because they are blogs.

Blogs don't need new tools - they're already there.

Tools for searching/reading/browsing Web pages and tools for searching/reading/browsing weblog posts will necessarily be different. Pages and posts have different metadata. Google searches pages but doesn't know anything about weblog posts. Imagine if iTunes couldn't utilize metadata on a song level, but only on an album level. How useful would it be? It would be like cassette tapes all over again. Call 'em what you want, but for blog-like content, new tools are needed to help people find what they've looking for.

While the points about other sites, ideally, being no different from blogs are great, the reality is there are still a lot of properties that make weblogs distinct from existing corporate and news sites. And their similarities are not merely limited to the tools that are used to publish them.

Being updated frequently, having a human voice, linking out to other sites generously, and focusing on presentation and markup quality are traits that very few corporate sites display.

In addition, you rarely see memes spread across corporate sites, except in geological time, and as displayed by things like "has an overblown animated logo" rather than "is obsessed with the latest political/technological news". I'd love for the web to largely be made up of websites that have no distinct traits from the subset known as blogs, but unfortunately that's not yet the case.

God love you. The buzzword zeitgeist surrounding the term "blog" is increasing the segmentation that you talk about. And it scares web novices ("mainstream audiences") away from a world that has an exclusionary "in-joke" feel to it — a feel that seems to be perpetuated by the hype more than the individual weblog authors.

If we could just get people to think of blogs as websites and tools like MT as website editors (after all, they're just content management systems which make a few specialized assumptions about the type and format of content), then we'd have something.

I wonder if other vehicles of media have had similar problems in the history of print, television or radio. The only things that comes to mind is having to broadcast a television problem on a public access cable channel.

Anil, you're emphasising a false dicohonomy there in trying to diffientiate a weblog and other sites. You do that in part by comparing it to "corporate and news sites" as though every weblog is there to be contrasted to BusinessWire and The Washington Post. Some have their niche in news commentary, but there are a lot of Movable Type and Blogger users using those tools to talk about their day in school, or catalog their college studying or to write a fictional story in diary form.
But of course, there is a interest by many of you to find a dragon whom you can slay, y'all being cyber-Don Quiotes and all. My mission in writing my website is not to slay any dragons or to shatter wisdoms... it's to make a place on cyberspace that is my own. That is the only difference between a weblog and the sites of The Washington Post or The White House or Sony Pictures. And that is why the so called rivaly between weblogs and newspapers is ridiculous. Y'all are not in the same mission... better yet, weblogs don't have missions, for they are not animate. Weblogs are tools, as are websites. Sony uses its website to sell you its movies. The Washington Post uses its website to sell you its reporters and analysis as windows on the world. I use my weblog to sell myself. (Well, maybe not sell.. I don't charge for anything, and I don't use it to parlay it into a career for anything). Since they're using their tools for different ends, it makes sense that they don't spread goofy memes or have too deep a personal view. I think I've rambled on long enough, but i just need to say there are fewer similarities between weblogs than you say.

I just say that my internet real-estate is just my somewhat free expression. Nothing overly lofty or pretentious. And free-expression predated technology by eons. Thus why I'm never going to say words like blogosphere. There is no need to segregate ourselves and puff ourselves up...

I think that part of what Todd says is right on. However I also see a trend taking place that sort of makes me laugh, and I am a part of it. Nobody wants to call their own site a "blog", because its such a buzz word. I am just as reluctant. But I think part of it is that as we notice a trend blowing up beyond our wildest dreams - weblogs getting stories on the Today show, Microsoft creating weblog search engines - we want to say ours is something more, something beyond, something previous - to this new monsterous idea. I like what Todd has to say about this being simply - a website, as anything on the web is. But I don't think that their being segmented really matters. It seems that a lot of stuff starts out that way. Look at sports, music and film, other forms of media, etc. Some things start out as a niche, and then they go mainstream - if the idea or system can survive. I think it makes more sense to recognize the blog as the name of the current step in the evolution of the web - as it is quickly becoming a dominant strain. No need to worry about what people call it though.

I can hear the violins in the background now. =)

Seriously though, I do agree that the word "weblog" or "blog" covers a broad spectrum of websites. Some people define it as, "(website) typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly."

To me that could be almost any website that uses content management software. Major news publications surely do this right? If that's the case, then I do agree that it would be nice to recognize what these broad range of site really are: personal websites, personal journals, design portfolios, photo galleries, small business sites, etc.

"Blog" does seem to spur negative connotations.

In the mainstream collective -IMHO-, the "blog" term still reeks of "sentimental diaries of hormone-challenged 15 year-old teenagers". For a while, it seemed to be so, but not anymore in this day and age where many self-respecting companies and publishers use the tool as an important complement of their web presence.

While I have a very unused blog, I see the power of the community's interest in it's power. I appriciate that there is a real sense of community and unstanding of what they have done. I've been to the conferences and seen the debates.

But it is at heart, still an indie community. I know it's an overused term, but one that best describes blogs. It's a small community with an impact beyond its numbers.

And it is now struggling with what all indie communities do, do we stay indie or do we recognize that there is some that want to "go mainstream". Some may call it selling out. Some may call it joining forces with "the man".

The truth is, like musicians, there will always be someone who want to discuss the Yo La Tengo album of San Ra covers and where it fits in the history of indie rock or doesn't (like CSS support with Mozilla Version X.X) and other who just want to enjoy the music. There will alsoways be someone who is unhappy if things change.

Screw it, the world changes.

Let the internet be what it must, let some people change this medium as needed, and let's forget the terms and just create interesting things.

I'm trying to (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), and will continue to since I beleive in this medium. Working with the web for years my goals have changed. And so have many others.

Whatever someone wants to call it. You can't please everyone, always, all you can do is do your thing, hope that it's true to yourself and your values, and maybe makes you a bit of $$ to live your life.

Blogs can fall into just about any category, but I think it's nothing more than a trend. It very much reminds me of the 'personal home page' boom in the late 90s where everyone flocked to sites like Geocities and Tripod to establish a web presence, but ended up neglecting their site.

The difference now is that the tools/hosts (i.e. Blogger, TypePad) make it easier to create a site and update it, just as the tools of the past made the web accessible to those who didn't know how to didn't know how to establish a web presence.

There are some blogs which adhere to a given topic. To me these are the web's equivalent of news wires, just as e-zines were the Internet equivalent of magazines. Are they journalism? It depends, I think, on the amount of original content that is produced. For topic-driven sites that only re-hash reports and links, I see them as filters.

What is really interesting, though, is that the popularity of blogs is not as big as some think (CNN: Very few bloggers on Net).

Warren said it right.

Todd,

You have officialy made 'blog' a four-letter word. Thank you.

The one thing that distinguishes these things from other websites for me is the fact that behind every weblog there is a person (or small group of people). Sure, most websites are written by people, but they lack the personable quality that makes you feel comfortable. Most websites are authored with an excessively general notion of audience, this mysterious group we call "web users," but when I write my weblog I assume a lot of things about my readers. Mainly I assume that they know who I am.

The personal web has always existed in the form of personal home pages, but these are flat, static representations, only a few facets of a person's identity. The weblog adapts to an individual's interests and attitude almost by definition. My weblog isn't the idealized representation of self that I display on my academic homepage, it's just me in real time.

I would definitely draw a line around weblogs, but I wouldn't do it based on the content management tool, aesthetic form or site structure. I'd say that weblogs aren't websites because they're people, and a person deserves a different style of attention than an authorless web page.

I could be wrong, but I wonder if some of the resistance to being termed a "blog" has to do with the blogging software. Since Blogger enables anyone to publish, regardless of technical acumen, perhaps those of us who can code a web page bristle a little at the idea of being lumped in with that crowd. (Not that they aren't excellent writers, in many cases.)

I think Todd's right on all counts. (Although I can see one distinction between a blog entry and a web page: the standardized format that allows it to be distributed as a discrete item via technology like RSS.) There is potential for miscommunication in presenting a web trend to a new and broader audience, depending on the presenter. If a Microsoft search engine, or the "Today" show, is making uneducated generalizations in their presentation, it's likely that new readers will approach "blogs" with some erroneous preconceptions about what online publishing is. To me, what's most impressive — even more than the incredible writing — is the community of sharing. The best blogs (whatever you call them) combine the old-time Internet filter concept with insightful commentary, personality, and a certain unflinching truth that invokes that "indie" classification. The fact that anyone can have one, regardless of expertise or subject matter, means that anyone can participate in the community. It would be a shame if people were unaware of that potential because they were told that only 16-year-old girls write blogs.

I agree with Cameron. While a weblog is first a website, it also falls into the weblog category of websites just as much as a portal site is first a website then a portal. The same could be said for search engine sites, corporate sites etc., all for different reasons. Cameron summed up pretty well the reasons weblogs are a definable subset of websites.

Personally, I really don't like the actual term "blog" or "weblog," but since it's what seems to have stuck, so be it.

I have never liked the term "blog" and have tried to make sure my site was never interpreted as such, although, when I had a news section people somehow thought I was blogging.

To dismiss the word blog and clump it together with website is to ignore the history and definition of blogs. The word itself - weblog - describes a specific task the owner/authors do with the site. Are we trying to define blogs by the style/type of content logged? Are news articles form wired or new york times logs? I think your argument is simple semantics. Blogs/blogging is now part of the daily discourse of websites and therefore is just another paradigm/model/classification of type of site. MSN is a 'website' but its classified as a portal site. Maybe we can call that a 'porite' or something.

It's worse than that: the blog universe is itself compartmentalized. Mine is actually a LiveJournal! The people who like to call their blogs "blogs" look down on the LiveJournalers. But LiveJournal is really just another weblogging tool-- certainly not the best one, but plenty good enough for the money; you don't *have* to use it just to talk about crushes and high-school lunchroom politics and how your parents don't understand you.

It's this anti-new, anti-nerd prejudice that tries to lump us all into the xanga-category of blogs.

You've got all the weather patterns coalescing to make a storm front of hate for the better'n'blog movement.

1) The mainstream has always hated nerds, but more especially now because of a bitter taste from the dot-com bomb.

2) Sites like the register or slashdot, with their old school nerds aren't playing nice to the new kids on the block. Pretty much any nerd-group on the Internet is fighting for their right to say that they are the true Internet pioneers. And so if those people don't run their own blogs, they automatically pile on hate to those that do. It's pure and simple culture clash. And the funny thing is, slashdot is just one big group blog.

It's mankind's damn fault. Their own tribal instincts and logical fallacies pervade into any medium they touch. dah!

a website is a website is a website.

sure, some have text, some have pictures, some have a bit of both and let you leave your own mark on them - but in the end it's just a personal website.

I've been deeply entrenched on the weblog bandwagon, and in the last few months I've hopped off.

I feel it's time to move away from "weblog" and back to "wow, that is an informative website - Ill bookmark that".

By continuing to pigeon hole websites into weblog and non-weblog, we limit ourselves and the medium of personal expression via our websites.

Bless your heart, sir.

As someone who fell in love with personal websites back in 1998 and have seen them morph (almost always to their detriment) into the "blog" rapid-entry/shorter-info/less-interesting form, I am pleased to see someone state the obvious.

To dismiss the word blog and clump it together with website is to ignore the history and definition of blogs.

That's pretty ironic, considering that most "bloggers" in the "blogosphere" who "blog" (see how ugly the word is?) are completely ignorant of the history of the personal Web pre-Pyra. It always amused and irked me that every new sap to type an entry into Blogger thought he discovered the wheel, when sites like Glassdog, Water, any of Alex Massie's personal projects, and 0sil8 (sorry for the snap before, Jason) had been around for years. It's a false claim to novelty, for blogs did not emerge, Athena-like, from the forehead of Evan Williams or Glenn Reynolds.

And frankly, if the best use for personal expression on the Web is to yap about iPods and The Postal Service and Dubya, we may as well pack it in right now, for it will represent such a colossal failure of imagination on the part of the human race that we should just beg for the asteroid to smash right now.

And Anil? With all respect, you have a vested interest in keeping the word "blog" in people's minds. Not exactly an objective observer. ;)

Give me a break--this site is a blog whether you like it or not. I despise the blog craze, which perhaps has already reached its peak, as much as any other old tyme web developer but you cannot argue with language. This is a blog and a website.

Anil is really the only one here humble enough to admit this.

Be honest; you and all of the original "bloggers" are upset that the territory which you were once pioneering has gone mainstream.

Of course, seeing that Todd's message was delivered via blog it's kind of preaching to the choir.

"Be honest; you and all of the original “bloggers” are upset that the territory which you were once pioneering has gone mainstream."

I can assure you that is not the case.

I wrote this -- and perhaps I didn't do the best job explaining my point -- to argue that the millions of "blog-ish" sites that are out there are a direct extension of what made the web such a vibrant, creative space in the very beginning.

By categorizing millions of sites with similar structures and content under one blanket title, the purveyors of the blogging community, and corporations with a business interest, are segmenting any personal web site from the "real" web. The message is that "blogs" are so unique, groundbreaking, and cool that they require new access points, when the tools already exist.

The very spirit of the beginning of the web (and perhaps this is completely lost by now) is that anyone could launch a site, for whatever intention, and immediately be in the same game as everyone else. Your audience and success (if that was what you were after) was a search engine query away.

But if the general classification of "blog" remains, and blankets millions of current and future sites, and specialized search engines are created to access this content (as opposed to mixing the results in with big, advertising-driven sites) then there will truly be two webs -- the corporate pay side, and the personal.

Perhaps I'm thinking too broadly about all this, but if tomorrow Google announced that all sites considered to be a "blog" were to be moved off the main engine's map and onto a specialized one, it wouldn't benefit anybody. But continued segmentation and obsession over the blogosphere will only strengthen that trend.

Wow...that was quite eloquently and articulately well put. You make a very, very good point. I concur with you completely and I humbly retract my comments. Thank you for the insight I would otherwise not have seen.

I wrote on this theme independently of seeing this post, so I'd like to bring my slant to the table. I agree with Todd's last statement that weblogs are in the spirit of the beginning of the Web in the early 90's - enabling normal everyday people to publish. However weblogs are still very far from being mainstream, because their focus is still on Writing + Links. Recently more multimedia forms have been added to the mix - mobile phone pictures and mp3 files are two examples. This trend I think signals where the future of "Web Publishing" lies. And this is where I make my grand pronouncement... ;-)

Blogs = Personal Publishing

...where "Personal Publishing" equals all forms of multimedia: text, music, photos, video, reviews, "situated software" apps, etc.

Blogs are indeed websites, but really I can't see either blogs or websites ever being created by more than a tiny subset of the general population. Personal publishing though, is for everyone. People are already producing and re-mixing multimedia - iPods, Tivo, etc. We're just waiting for more tools to make those things (and more) as easy to publish as blogs.

Anyways, if you're interested here's my weblog post(!) on the subject - Kill Blog. I'm sure I'll blog more on this ;-)

Interesting discussion, no doubt had a few dozen times before on blogs across the web, although maybe not as eloquently.

Is there a defacto history of the blog? I have always seen it as a evolving combination of the 1) 1999-ish bloom in everything/nothing sites which typically catered singley to sex or dogma and 2) aggregator sites like slashdot or bluesnews. Currently, I would just separate modern popular blogs from their E/N ancestors as being a little better written and having community comments.

That said, I feel at my core there is a danger not distinguishing a blog as what it is, one person's perspective. Every single blog item I read has to be tempered with the constant thought that this post is only be part of the story and this author could be wrong because they are an ill informed idiot or conciously trying to subvert an issue.

One could argue that every piece of information read anywhere sshould be challenged for credulity, the blog just makes it easier to not be credible or accountable.

My wife tells me I'm a simple man who sees things mostly in black and white, so you'll have to forgive me if the following is too simplistic.

For me, "weblog" or "blog" are to websites what "diary" or "journal" are to books. It is important to differentiate them, so that the reader/user has some idea of what to expect.

I actually like the term "blog" because I use it to differentiate my personal writings from the other parts of my website (although I suppose you consider it ALL to be personal writings). On many corporate websites, you may find a "blog" that offers a more relaxed, less corporatey area of the site that gives the organization a warmer, more personal feel.

Of course the word "blog" itself is a little unflattering, but it is already firmly enshrined in weblore, so it may as well remain.

Yeah, I never much cared for the term "blog" myself... But it grew on me I guess. I look at them -blogs and websites- as pretty much the same thing, except that [most] blogs adhere to a certain set of codified, arbitrary directives other websites don't really need to bother with.

But that's just my opinion and I could be wrong...

this background is better.

http://www.thelongwinters.com/

Interesting enough I was browsing a site on web archive today and decided to take a look at an old site of mine (from 1999). What struck me the instant I started reading it was that if I were to put that site back up today it would be considered a blog (which made me instantly think of this post). Until this point I'd never though of that site as anything other then my website (now old discontinued website). Long story short, I see you point and I totally agree with you.

My sister publishes stuff about her kids on her website. Some of the reasons it's just a "site" and not a "blog" is
* it's not templated and categorized
* it's not archived and dated
and more importantly,
* she doesn't post to it eight times a day.

Blogs = Personal Publishing

Almost.

Blogs = the Web with easy CMS

The World Wide Web = Personal Publishing

Ergo, This is a website.

todd dominey,you have come closest to my idea of a blog.But most of these people here have better skills at making websites and define "blog" as a personal publishing medium.They grew up in the wild west of the "usernet" etc when the internet was young.While I have come to look at blogs as means of shifting through mountains of informations that is on the internet.Google doesn't even approach the power of the mind as a search engine.If a blog is set up properly it can convey the ideas of the blogger in such a crystalized order that it amazes me. My favourite blogs are library blogs.------blogs ---websites----televisions-----newspaper-----textbooks----I don't really care about the medium----all I care about is getting the information .----that's the one great drawback about blogs---its so hard to retrieve that one bit of information or idea.