Blog ?

I collect some very basic blog specific questions i got from friends and try to answer that questions.

• What is a blog?

Blog is for me just like a journal where you can write anything you want. For example i wrote a lot about web development, internet culture, Apple Macintosh, Web 2.0 and any other things i found interesting. Please put the emphasis on that word “writing”, this is the part that often missed from what the internet should be, a Read-Write Media. Technicaly blog is a data-driven or dynamic web page, where the owner can update the page regulary and in a very simple processes. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of World Wide Web and founder of World Wide Web Consortium, see how close blogging to his original idea of internet, a Read-Write web.

• Why are you using blog for that

Blog makes updating of a journal like web page much more easier, compare with the time when you have to go to the HTML code to change the content.

• But Content Management System has been around for since internet became everyday thing

Yes that is right, but a blog has a specific features such as: content structure according to the date, user-comment-functionality for anyone to put their comment to each post easily. That is true that blog uses some features that a CMS offers but Blog is still not a CMS as it is or a reduced form of a CMS. But there are also some all-in-one applications that provide blog as a modul to their CMS software.

• Comment features? so then is blog a message board?

I see that two platforms differently even though from a user prespective it serves almost the same purpose: provide visitors/readers an interactive and two-way information and communication platform. Blog started as a very individual tool, it is a personal journal, Forum didn’t. Forum owned and run mostly by a group to provide the user with a communication platform for discussing a certain topics that is why forum is topic structured. Well Blog has been experiencing some transformations, now it is common that a group or companies also run a blog. The mechanism of how the conversation within forum or blog is not the same, in forum visitor invited to start the conversation, where blog is still more downward oriented, which means the owner starts the conversation. Blogs that lets anyone start a post is for me not a blog, it is more a forum but at this time blog is cool, so they still call it blog. From a visitor perspective they both complement one another

• How can someone recognize a page as a blog?

For sure, you can not recognize blog only from the word BLOG that might be on that page. There are some typical elements of a blog, event thought the owner can always deactivate those typical features, but a blog should be organized according to the date of each post, remember it is a journal tool. There is this comment feature for the visitors to put their comments to the post made by the owner. For the ease of browsing the posts most of the blogs has calendar embeded on the page showing when at least a post is available. Since a post often refers to other posts, articles or news there is a track-back that lists some links related to the post. Important is also that it keeps the downward communication principle where the owner (can be a group) starts the conversation. Sometimes people does not know that they are on a blog page, specially if you go to blog page of news web site such as from BusinessWeek, because the way blog display the content structure is almost similar to a normal news or article, it consists of a title, a date and a body text, in addition of that there is the comment link placed mostly at the end of the body text.