I have been trying to figure what technically makes a blog a blog and I hoped the BrainFuel faithful would help me out. So far I have these attributes as the minimum requirements to be considered a blog:
- A list of posts sorted from newest to oldest
- Permalinks for stories
- Syndication (RSS/Atom)
- Comments
So here’s the question: does a blog have to have all of these attributes to be classified as a blog? What am I missing?
8 responses to “What Makes a Blog a Blog?”
A regularly updated journal. I’d like to think that RSS isn’t required and comments also are optional. Defining blog is difficult.
@Chris going to have to disagree. RSS and comments are the key to any blog. Without them you just have a traditional webpage that changes. Two way communication and content consumed on where the reader wants is why blogs have been so successful.
Lots of blogs disable comments, and I’ve never stopped and thought they’re not a blog because of that. So I’m going to second Chris’ summary.
While the other three are nice to have (and qualify as features), in the STRICTEST sense, only the first one is required to define a blog. There were many blogs (as a publishing format) in existence before those other features came along.
@Danny, yes those features definitely helped catapult blogging into popularity amongst the masses, but they don’t define the form.
As Chris mentioned, defining a blog is indeed difficult and I would have to say that I’ve seen blogs that only satisfy the first requirement on the list (chronological posts) and still draw viewers and followers.
Interesting. I think a list of posts is not enough to be qualified as a blog. I think that’s a “news list”. I could be wrong.
Entries
Of course, comments are the essence of blogging, and continue and good write style