When does a blog think it’s a blog, but really it isn’t? TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Zoli Erdos are pointing the finger at the Google Blog, asking if it truly is a blog. Why? Because they don’t allow comments.
Michael Arrington said it well:
“I believe the term “blog†means more than an online journal. I believe a blog is a conversation. People go to blogs to read AND write, not just consume. We’ve allowed comments here on TechCrunch since it started. At times, user comments can be painful to deal with. But they also keep the writer honest, and make the content vastly more interesting.”
“Should the definitions of ‘blog’ be revised to exclude journals that do not allow reader comments? Yeah, absolutely.”
Web managers and newspaper executives should take note. Newspaper folks sometimes think they’re hip to the Web by simply publishing or contributing to a blog without understanding that it is a much more interactive format.
Without the interactivity provided in the comments (and actually engaging readers), a blog becomes just another publishing platform, an easy way to produce regular pages with plain information on them. And there’s nothing really new or hip about that, is there?
For a long time, blogging was sold to newspaper people as “it’s just another publishing platform.” But that’s not really true. Good blogging, real blogging is a conversation.
That said, you don’t need to have comments on your blog posts to have a conversation. Instapundit, for example, is a master at conversational blogging without comments. And I’ve seen many blogs with comments where the blogger is not engaging in conversation at all — posting and ignoring subsequent comments.
I suppose Romenesko’s site might be considered a blog without comments because of the fact that he heavily publishes letters and solicits content from readers. He gets letters up there so quick, it’s almost like moderating comments on a blog. Really, if you want to get technical, a blog is simply a publishing tool. But if folks are going to label something as a “blog” on a news site, I’m a believer that it should be something different that contains some interactivity with the author. For the purposes of a news site, a “blog” that’s only a one-way conversation should just be placed wherever the columns are, because that’s exactly what it becomes.
Nice post. The blog is really informative as well as useful.
And to be honest – the google blog is more than corporate blog, which publish all the latest news about google and everything related to this SE.
Every business should have a blog in order to inform the public whats new. It is a must these days.