Blogs and web logging
By Gillian Kerr, RealWorld Systems
The information in this article is current as of October 9, 2003.
In a previous article I described
Google's new toolbar, which includes features like pop-up ad blocking, streamlined
searching, and blogging, or web logging. This month, I'm going to focus on
blogs and how organizations can use them.
What are blogs?
Blogs are online journals, or 'weblogs' (say it quickly and you'll see why they are called 'blogs') that enable people to post snippets of information to the web as often as they like. Many bloggers post several times a day; others may post a few times a year. Blog services are designed to be easy to use without knowing anything about html or the myriad technical complexities of publishing to the web. However, most of them also offer a great deal of functionality for advanced users who want to tweak the settings.
The brief history of blogs is summarized
beautifully by Rebecca Blood. Blood distinguishes between the daily journal
blog, in which writers talk about what they ate that day and what their friends
are doing, and the 'filter blog', which provides a platform to discuss, challenge
and pass on news from any source. Blogs became visible during the Iraqi war,
allowing individuals (including, in some cases, Iraqis
themselves) to communicate what was happening without mediation from mass
media. As blogging become still easier to use and the Internet continues to
become more globally accessible, this micro-medium will expand to communities
that have not been able to take advantage of a free press Ð including low income
groups in North America.
The real and future impact of blogs is being hotly debated. These are some of the issues:
- Blogs, like most good ideas, are being co-opted by large corporations and political parties that are using them for advertising and promotion.
- There are so many blogs that readers are drowning in information (estimates
say there are well
over 2 million blogs)
- Most blogs are dumb and pointless (however, Wired
News cites Sturgeon's Law, which states, "Sure, 90% of science-fiction
is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud.")
- Blogs offer a real opportunity to create an alternative to mass media
- Blogs create personality cults, in which the most popular get read and the least popular are invisible
- And so on.
What are blogs good for?
At a very simple level, blogs are great for posting time-limited information on the web. Some examples include:
- Posting updates, announcements, events and news on an agency web site. The
'news' link on an agency web site could lead to a blog that could be updated
by staff or volunteers in seconds. Old news is automatically archived, and
each entry is time- and date-stamped. A lovely example is the Status.Blogger.Com
page, which merely lists current problems with the Blogger service and what
they are doing to fix it. It is hosted on a separate server so that even
if their web site goes down, users can find out what's happening and when
it will be resolved. Wouldn't it be great if other web services did this?
- Posting neat or useful information for communities or teams. I have started
a blog - blog.realworldsystems.net - to keep track of the daily research I do regarding technology, policy,
research and so on, and to communicate it to people who are interested in
what I'm finding. It's completely idiosyncratic, based on the issues that
appeal to me at any given moment. Other team members can do the same.
- Creating a 'team blog' that shares group information on a project or topic
of interest. Blogger provides several ways to build a team blog, including
the capacity to post emails onto a blog automatically. In other words, team
members can send an email to blog_username@blogspot.com,
and the email will be posted. Or, the email will be marked as a private
draft until an authorized editor approves and publishes it. Other options
include a 'blog to email' feature, in which a mailing list can be sent new
items as soon as they are posted.
- Many blogging programs provide RSS, or 'Really Simple Syndication', that
enable readers to automatically download postings from blogs that appeal
to them. In fact, RSS is being suggested as a spam-free replacement for
email newsletters. See this
posting on my own blog for details.
Blogs can be public or password-protected.
Blogging options
The software leaders of the blogosphere
are Radio, Blogger
and Movable Type. There are several
other blogging tools, but newbies should probably stick with one of those
three.
Blogger and Radio are compared here,
and although the comparison is over a year old, most of the comments still seem
accurate. For a more technical comparison of the three, see Radio
Blogistan.
I've tried several blogging tools, and recommend Blogger for its simplicity.
It is completely web-based (so it can be edited on a public computer like a
library), it's free, and offers an instant way to post content by dragging
a 'Blog This' link to your browser toolbar. It works with any recent browser
and operating system. It takes about 5 minutes to create a fully functional
blog, including your choice of design templates. To create a blog, go
here. Blogger is undergoing some changes right now as a result of its recent
acquisition by Google, and some of its functionality is temporarily missing.
For example, Google appears to be introducing a new, more powerful search engine
for blogs, and in the meantime, Blogger doesn't offer a search.
Movable Type is the best-looking software, but requires more technical expertise. Both Radio and Movable Type have a great deal of complexity, so if you have a programmer or a technical enthusiast you can create some very interesting web sites, but their documentation is poor and I don't recommend it for official agency use.
In addition, there are blog-like entities called Wikis, "collaboratively-edited
website[s] which many people also view as an anarchistic publishing tool. The
distinguishing feature of Wikis is that they typically allow really all users
to edit any page, with full freedom to edit/change/delete the work of previous
authors." [from UseMod].
Wikis have a cult following, but haven't hit the mainstream yet. It may happen
yet; this month, the popular Web Crossing service announced they are providing
Wikis as part of their collaborative toolset, along with their discussion groups.
**********
Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.
President, RealWorld Systems
gkerr at realworldsystems.net
Read my weblog at http://blog.realworldsystems.net
