Monday, December 08, 2003

A comment on the groub blog threadlet. Scoble, Dave and others have been exchanging some views on whether 'group blogs' are a good thing. Some points to add to the conversation: When I am explaining what (I think) a blog is to folks who've never heard of one, a very typical question or observation is: "Oh, isn't that what a newsgroup or mailing list is?" I think one of the fundamental differences (maybe the only one) is that a newsgroup consists of postings by many people  about a single topic. A blog, then, consists of postings by one person on his/her thoughts on many topics. By the way: This is maybe why we need categories in blogs but not in newsgroups. This harkens back to a discussion of what a blog is at all. For example, is the Dean blog is a blog, whether metafilter is a blog? There are other hybridgs. I happen to not think they qualify as blogs. Net, net: It's a continuum - if two people contribute to a blog is different than if two thousand people contribute to it. I would say, though, that the more authors there are, the less of a blog it is. 6:55:10 AM  >  trackback []   comment []