mono

As a researcher, I often find myself occupied with definitions and descriptions of the various terms and concepts I encounter. Most of the time I find it difficult to move on until I feel that I have fully understood whatever it is that I am doing or writing about. So as I was about to publish my first weblog, the first question was rather obvious:

What is a weblog? Really.

To answer this, I collected a set of definitions and descriptions that seem to provide more or less accurate answers. There are similarities and some obvious differences, and I don't agree with all of them. But until we have an official ISO definition, it's just a question of picking the one that feels right for you. They are listed here in chronological order.

Definitions

The History of Weblogs by Dave Winer, 1999:

Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there's also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.

Weblogs: a history and perspective by Rebecca Blood, 2000:

A website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page.

Annual Weblog Awards by Nikolai Nolan, 2002:

A "weblog" is a page with dated entries that has a purpose (in whole or in part) of linking to other sites. For instance, sites that are intended to be just personal journals or site news pages are not eligible.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2003, defines "weblog" as:

A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary.

What makes a weblog a weblog? by Dave Winer, 2003:

A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.

What Blogs Are by Dana Blankenhorn, 2003:

Blogs are instant publishing.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (draft) by Jill Walker:

A weblog, or blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first (see temporal ordering). Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal...

Descriptions

What We're Doing When We Blog by Meg Hourihan, 2002:

Whether you're a warblogger who works by day as a professional journalist or you're a teenage high school student worried about your final exams, you do the same thing: you use your blog to link to your friends and rivals and comment on what they're doing. Blog posts are short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal, no matter what topic they approach. They can be characterized by their conversational tone and unlike a more formal essay or speech, a blog post is often an opening to a discussion, rather than a full-fledged argument already arrived at.

[....]

The weblog post is a self-contained topical unit. It can be as short as one sentence, or run for several paragraphs. And it's the amalgamation of multiple posts -- on varying topics -- on a single page that distinguishes the weblog from its online ancestor, the home page. Freed from the constraints of the printed page (or any concept of "page"), an author can now blog a short thought that previously would have gone unwritten. The weblog's post unit liberates the writer from word count.

[....]

The linking that happens through blogging creates the connections that bind us. Commentary alone is the province of journals, diaries, and editorial pieces.

Further reading

1. Coates, Tom (2003), (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything..., plasticbag.org, September 3, 2003.
2. Doval, Diego (2003), An introduction to weblogs, d2r, October 31, 2003.
3. Farber, Dan (2004), What's up with blogging, and why should you care?, ZDNet, February 22, 2004.
4. Mead, Rebecca (2000), You've Got Blog, rebeccamead.com (from The New Yorker), November 13, 2000.