Defining Blogs

One of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Jarvis, recently wrote a short piece which prompted me to think about the definition of blogs.  Jeff titled his piece Defying Definition, proclaiming that "Blogs are whatever we make of them.  Defining "blog" is a fool's errand."  Looks like I'd be the fool today!

I've already attempted once at discussing what blogs are in my previous post, although I never gave it a precise definition.  While I was thinking about it, I came across BlogCn.com which explained blogs using the diagram above.  Reading clockwise from top, it says: publishing, self-expression, communications. Expanding from it, I came up with the followings:

A blog is a personal website created (using a simplified template) for purpose of publishing, self-expression, sharing and communications. 

I debated as to whether using a template is a condition for blogs - after all, the lines between a blog and a personal website is increasingly blurred.  This also doesn't cover corporate blogs; although I'd like to think of corporate blogs as just another marketing/customer communications tool. 

Image Credit: www.blogcn.com

Comments

[Ingrid]

Were you a fool, you'd be a wise one!

At the risk of repetition, Yahoo!360 just rolled out the beta version that puts Blog, home/webpage, Photo-log and email under one roof. A full-fledged blog will probably replace the good ol' homepage as we know it.

As Kaiser alluded, it's the desire for "self-expression", whatever that is, that makes blog such a popular outlet today.

[Kaiser]

I disagree with the template part. Templates make it a mass phenomenon but without them there can still be blogs. Lets just hope that corporations don't come in and kill the golden egg.