Categories: Articles

What Is A Blog? The Question That Won't Go Away

By the way the conversation flowed at this year’s BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles, you would think that Blogging was brand new.

Rick Calvert (the CEO and co-founder of BlogWorld and New Media Expo) invited me down to moderate a panel called, Building A New Media Empire> The panel also featured Deanna Brown (CEO of Federated Media), Lisa Stone (co-founder of BlogHer) and Michael Stelzner (found of Social Media Examiner). It was yesterday morning’s keynote (which was also the last day of this three-day long conference) that brought out a ton of in-person discourse on Blogs, Blogging, Social Media and the future of media. In all of that, it seemed like everyone (including yours truly) grapples and struggles with the definition of a "Blog." In more than a few sessions, speakers and participants would ask questions like, "is The Huffington Post a Blog?" or "is TechCrunch a Blog?"

What is a Blog?

While some may call me a traditionalist, I think there are certain aspects of online publishing that does identify something as a Blog, and they include:

RSS feed.
Comments.
Journal like publishing design – meaning the content runs chronologically from newest to oldest.
Trackbacks.
Permalinks.
Archive by date.
A semblance of opinion and character in the content.

Do you need to have all of them?

Absolutely not. The real challenge is that many news websites reside on a Blogging platform and this causes some confusion. We also see many more corporations building websites on WordPress platforms because the content management system is just that much easier. Yes, it’s increasingly difficult to say, "this is a website, but this is a Blog," and perhaps we are closely getting to that moment in time when it becomes identifiable simply by, "knowing it when you see it." As Blogging became more pervasive (back in the early 2000s) and then audio Podcasting (followed shortly thereafter by video podcasting), I made the argument to simply call it all "publishing" (actually my original term was, "instant publishing"). At the end of the day, Blogging is a publishing platform. It allows anybody to have a thought, and to share that thought in text, images, audio and video, instantly and for free for the world to see.

Instant publishing.

Is Twitter a Blog (some call in micro-blogging)? Is flickr a Blog (you can post pictures, comment on them, archive them date, etc…)? Is tumblr a Blog (some would argue that tumblr is a Blog mixed with more social layers)? Michael from Social Media Examiner agrees. He prefers to call himself a publisher over a Blogger. I’m quick to agree that whether it’s the business book, Six Pixels of Separation, the Blog or the Podcast, it is just publishing, but I still prefer to say that I’m a Blogger and Podcaster (especially over titles like, "journalist" and "writer"). For some reason, those words resonate with me. They make me feel like I don’t have to hold myself to the standards of a traditional media (and if you’re asking, yes I do write differently when it’s for this Blog or when it’s for a newspaper). The content that I publish here – by the sheer fact that it’s a called a Blog or a Podcast – gives me the right to experiment more text and audio. To be more irreverent and to test the waters of text and audio.

Blogging still feels more punk to me… and I like it that way just fine, thank you very much.

(No, this is not a new thought. More riffing on this from 2006: A Blog Is Like Lemmy From Motorhead).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.