New from Weblogs Inc:
(So branding isn’t their strong suit.)
Meanwhile, Weblogs Inc CEO Jason Calacanis has a recent rant titled “What makes a website a blog? (the blog test).” I’m not sure who died and made him king of the bloggers, and, no, I don’t agree with all of his criteria (particularly not about comments — so, I take it Instapundit isn’t a blogger? Or about the lack of an editor — at MarketingVox, editor Tig Tillinghast makes contributors post to draft, but it’s still a blog in my book; and as for frequently linking to other sites, so Salam Pax’s site wasn’t a blog when he was just writing about life in Baghdad before and during the invasion?). Whatever. I think trying to define a blog is a waste of time. You know it when you see it, that’s about it.
What I would recommend to Jason, however, for his new blogs to make them more blog-like and credible would be some personal identity. What really makes a blog a blog, if you ask me, is some kind of relationship readers have with the writer. Looking at these new Weblogs Inc blogs, however, I see no indication of who the authors are. They’re not pseudononymous, they’re just anonymous.
We don’t need a set of rules, just self-policing (like this post, or Jason’s other excellent post calling Drew Curtis to account for payola) and commonly accepted best practices.
Good luck with the new, blogs, though. They look otherwise interesting.
UPDATE:
Here is a definition of what makes a (good) blog that I prefer.
Well, you might not like the brand autoblog.com or bloggingbaby.com but we are educating like 20k a people a day with those two blogs as to what a blog is (most readers coming have never seen a blog!).
In terms of the “rules” they are obviously loose and i make the point in the story to say that you need to have unfiltered content from the author to the readers–i think you just say it a little stronger. maybe i’ll update that point, but a strong voice is more of a quality of a good blog, not all blogs.
also, our blogs have a lot of personality if you read them over time… we get a lot of people posting in the comments, etc. However, whenever you take a topic approach (as opposed to “this is my life view”), you lose a little of the personality… think about it, writing about cars all day vs. writing about what you think of the world all day. it’s harder to writer about cars all day and get personality out (esp. without making the audience get disinterested in the blog).
thanks for props over Fark.
Comment by Jason — August 9, 2004 @ 10:09 am
It’s not a question of a lack of personality, but personal identitification, i.e., the names of the authors. Why are they anonymous? Are you trying to be the Economist of blogs?
Comment by Rick Bruner — August 9, 2004 @ 10:35 am
Good questions… Answer: If you click on any of the story headlines (or comments link) you see the name of the blogger. Like Gawker.com does we take the name and time/date stamp off the top level because it looks better. 🙂
btw: We launched those three blogs like six weeks ago!
Comment by Jason — August 9, 2004 @ 3:04 pm
Ah. That wouldn’t have occurred to me to look for credit there. I’m not sure why it “looks better” to make the name of the poster less apparent. Gawker does handle this a bit differently, though, in two ways that I think are preferable: 1) the “Credits” for the site, including its writer, designer, publisher, etc., are listed on the homepage, so it’s pretty transparent, and 2) those names are hyperlinked for further context. I am glad that I had just overlooked this and you do indeed credit the writers, but I think it would serve both your readers and the blog authors to give their personal identities higher profile, so we all have better context on who they are (at a glance, without having to invest weeks in reading the site to get a sense of them through their writing).
But, just a suggestion. Love what you do, keep it up!
Comment by Rick Bruner — August 9, 2004 @ 3:18 pm
good idea regarding more top-level recognition on the blogs… we’re discussing now.
Comment by Jason — August 9, 2004 @ 9:56 pm