What is a Blog?

What is a blog? Can it be defined?

I’ve been blogging for about two years, and I still have trouble describing what a blog is. I’m sure most bloggers do as well. However, get this straight: “Blog” does not mean “online journal” (webjournals as I call them).

Webjournals are only a fraction of the blogosphere, and often not the better fraction. Look, most people don’t want to read what you had for lunch. You’re not that interesting. The average 13-year-old may think so, but they can use MySpace (bleh). Blogs are more than journals.

Here are some examples of blogs:

The first is a blog about blogging, the second a technology news site, the third a Harry Potter news site, and the last a personal journal-type blog. They’re all blogs.

So what is a blog? It depends whom you ask. Here’s my definition, and one of the more popular ones:

A blog is a website consisting mainly of chronologically listed articles, called “posts.” Generally there are categories (and optionally “tags”) as well as date-based archives of posts that have since disappeared from the front page. The front page may vary, sometimes having “features” like magazines, but blogs always have individual pages dedicated to the display of single posts.