While reviewing entries on the Pinoy Top Blogs, I noticed that some of them might seem like a plain web site rather than a blog. The question still remains, what constitutes a blog?
In my presentation during the iBlog Summit last May, I referred to a blog as:
These posts are often but not necessarily in reverse chronological order. Such a website would typically be accessible to any Internet user. The format of weblogs varies, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to article summaries with user-provided comments and ratings.
Individual weblog entries are almost always date and time-stamped, with the newest post at the top of the page, and reader comments often appearing below it.
Because links are so important to weblogs, most blogs have a way of archiving older entries and generating a static address for individual entries; this static link is referred to as a permalink.
A weblog is edited, organized and published often through a content management system or CMS.
A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
Source: Wikipedia / Blogger.com
Sean emailed me this:
Take Citizen Watch, for example. Is this a blog? At first glance, this seems to be a journalistic blog that’s much like the Inside PCIJ site – only that it contains news and updates regarding the Arroyo political debacle. A closer look, however, notes that the articles on the site are apparently submitted by independent users to an editorial board before being published online. “Citizen Watch”, with its “Sun.Star” affiliation, feels more like an online newspaper than a blog to begin with.
Or, for that matter, how is an online newspaper NOT a blog? It clearly reflects the opinions of multiple people on a single site.
Check his blog later for a more indepth discussion.
The C at replied back with this:
ENCANTADIA is not a pinoyblog. it is a blog for channel 7 shows. Citizenwatch is a Sunstar newspaper. The pinoy blog is being used for their adverstisement.
Now there’s another thought. Does motive count when considering if a site is a blog or not?
Although I believe I have the last say on Pinoy Top Blogs, I’d really appreciate it if the Pinoy Blogging Community do a self-check.
You can if you want to,that’s your choice.
Long live the bloggerss!!
LCD TV’s are good, but I prefer plasma. The picture quality is superior and the unit’s seem to last longer. Plus they look cool.
I dont think blogs are any different than forums. It has the same look and feel except the back end to add the content is a little different and slightly more managable. The true vaue is in the forums because it gets views involved in the process and the layout are entirely different.
Hello, i have a site about music, can i place a link to your website?
You posted “how is an online newspaper NOT a blog? It clearly reflects the opinions of multiple people on a single site.”
A newspaper is a collection of factual events. Only a Liberal would define a newspaper as a collection of opinions.
The definition of blog has changed since it’s inception. It has swallowed up traditional homepages, community, and commercial websites under it’s wing. What all blogs do have in common is commenting directly on the article whether they be commercial blogs, tech blogs, community blogs.
OT: Your gravatar sign up code doesn’t seem to work.
sa dami ng blog sa mundo, adhikain ni yuga ang pagsasamahin ang mga blog na gawa ng pinoy hindi isyu ang kung gaano karami ang bumibisita sa bawat pinoyblog. basta pinoy, tungkol sa pinoy, may relasyon sa pinoy, nakadikit sa pinoy, puwede natin ito isama sa pinoy blog.
pinoy muna bago blog…
I think that the term “blog” refers to a broad and still-evolving concept. Just like many of you already mentioned, there are personal blogs, corporate blogs, community blogs, etc. Some features that are today considered “standard” (like RSS and even trackbacks) are not even present on many blogs a few years ago.
That’s the reason why it’s pretty hard to define what is a blog and what isn’t.
For our own purposes, I think we have to define a *pinoyblog* (not just “blog”) as a blog which has *all* the following characteristics:
1. It has the technical characteristics mentioned in the definition of the term “blog” in the Wikipedia.
2. It is authored by a Pinoy individual or members of a Pinoy community.
3. It is *not* a corporate blog.
4. ( Add more criteria here… )
Then we go further and declare that only *pinoyblogs* (not just any blog) are allowed in the Pinoy Top Blogs. (And maybe rename it to “Top Pinoy Blogs”).
Thanks everyone for the inputs.
When I started Pinoy Top Blogs, I had the individual Pinoy Bloggers interest in mind. With PinoyBlog.com, we were successful in making the pinoy bloggers’ presence felt. With Pinoy Top Blogs, I hope we can make our numbers matter and our cummulative traffic something to reckon with.
If we concede on a technicality, almost every site there can be, in the minutest sense, considered a blog.
Thus, I’d like to return back to my original intent and exclude those that does not seem to fit with the goals of this project.
I have started off by removing Pinoyblog from the Community/Group blog category.
Karla: Ah talaga? Didn’t know that hehe I think I should sign up for one…NOT ;)
on 22. Hi Marc, friendster blogs are powered by Typepad hehe.
OK, I agree. For the sake of objectivity, two of the “safest” criteria would be the content format and the tool used to publish the content. With that said, I guess most websites created with these tools qualify as blogs then.
OT: counted ba yung mga Friendster blogs? hehe jk :)
Re # 17. On authors. No, nothing as elitist as that.
Authors meaning, does the content of the blog have to be written by the blog authors/publishers? What if it accepts contributions from the general public, should it be categorized differently?
And, yes, this thread was borne out of a controversy in “Pinoy Top Blogs”. Yuga said so in the entry.
re #17. the term blog was born with the first CMS. befores then, there were web sites. which is still the generic term that includes blogs. specific vis a vis generic. kasi, if we include sites with all other formats, let’s not use “pinoy top blogs” anymore. “pinoy top sites” na lang.
I think the word blog describes a publishing format. Here’s part of Wikipedia’s current entry on it:
A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of “blogging”.
John C. Dvorak’s primer on blogging also describes a publishing format http://www.dvorak.org/blog/primer/blogprimer1.htm
In answering the question “What is a blog?â€, I suggest we take it at the same level as answering “What is a Wiki?†and not “What is good music?.†In short, let us do away with subjective definitions such as content but definitions that immediately help differentiate a blog from, say, a website. What definitions differentiate a blog from a wiki?
In my opinion, what differentiates a news website from a news blog is that a news website arranges articles in order of importance based on the media outfit’s news valuation. A news blog on the other hand, arranges postings chronologically.
Issues on content are answers to the question: “What is a good blog?â€
Without even reading a publication, you’d know whether it is a newspaper or a magazine. After reading it, you’d know whether, in your opinion, it is a good one or not.
But, as I said earlier, the question really is on the listing. Yuga can, for example, limit listings to individual bloggers and bar institutional blogs if the site wants to promote only individual Pinoy bloggers. Yuga can also reject listings of blogs that were put out mainly to advertise one product or service.
Why not just have Pinoy Top Blogs (I’m still wondering if that’s supposed to be Top Pinoy Blogs) have a categories to separate blogs?
Something like
1) Personal
2) Professional
Or
1) Entertainment
2) Technical
3) Personal
4) Mixed
5) Religious
Just to remove the complaints some may have about certain high traffic sites not really being appropriately in Pinoy Top Blogs?
Personally, I don’t really mind if my blog never goes higher in rank. I just like the fact seeing my rank now does encourage me to try and come up with more interesting articles in order to cater to a growing audience base.
I used to be very selfish, writing only about things that concern me. Now I try to write about things I want others to consider being concerned about too. Or about things others might want to know about. Its helped widen the horizons of my blog.
My $0.02 ulit.
I think it’s hard to qualify blogs based on those three factors. While it will describe some of the blogs out there, it will unfairly classify a million more sites that don’t share the same qualities as the prescribed ones as “non-blogs”.
Format – if it looks like one of those MovableType, WordPress or Blogspot templates…or if it has the post-comments-trackback-sidebar thing going on it’s a blog? What if I don’t use any of the blog publishing services out there and (egad) create my HTML one static page at a time and host it in some God-forsaken free web hosting service like Geocities.com…does it still count as a blog?
Content – if it’s angsty, personal, fresh, interesting, opinionated, or thought-provoking it’s a blog?
Author(s) – I don’t understand this part. Does it mean if it’s by someone who has the gift of web gab it’s a blog?
I think coming up with a univerally accepted blog definition is an excercise in futility.
Question to the group: did the definition dilemma come about because “non-blogs” are “polluting” the PTB results? Are we coming up with a definition to exclude perceived “non-blogs” from the PTB results?
To weed out non-desirables, PTB could come up with a screening committee which will have absolute authority to decide which sites qualify in the PTB. Since it’s a voluntary service, all who participate in it should abide by the site’s rules. In the end, it really won’t matter if it’s a blog or not in the general sense of the word. PTB should be the sole arbiter here, not us.
Peace.
Suggested factors for defining a blog:
1) format
2) content
3) author(s)
Do we consider just one, two or all of them?
I’m not too big on definitions and pigeon-holing, but maybe a “blog” should contain personal thoughts/insights/experiences that are written in such a way that they arouse interest from the the general, anonymous reader. What I mean is, someone surely is “logging” on (it is a weblog, isn’t it?) and that someone should surface through the style of writing, the argumentation, etc. But more than that, it should be well aware that there is a reader, and that the reader may or may not know him; the blog should be something that transcends the merely personal.
These big websites– are they blogs? I don’t know, really, but I’d like to stick to my pseudo-definition and say that they aren’t. Where is the “I” persona, the speaker, the web logger? Somewhere far away, probably.
On the other hand, a lot of people keep online journals, and a lot of these are, more or less, diary-type entries that I (as the reader) couldn’t care less about. What these people don’t understand (or refuse to subscribe to) is the idea that blogging is a form of self-publishing, and that it is evolving into its own form of literature. Some people refer to this as “hypertext literature.” And anything claiming to be literature should impose a certain discipline on itself–before banging away at their keyboards to talk about how toxic their day was, they should ask: what is good writing? How can I make this interesting to someone who just happens upon my blog?
Or: how does the blogger juggle the reader-writer dynamic?
(A lot of bloggers will say that they don’t claim that what they’re writing is literature. But then again, utilizing the genre is in fact a claim that their entries are literature, in the sense that, as I’ve posited, blogging has evolved. When one writes something and cuts it up into lines and stanzas, isn’t one claiming, albeit implicitly, that it is poetry?)
Ay, ewan. What do you think?
Whether Inside PCIJ is a real blog or not, maybe we should just categorize “blogs” that are being maintained by big groups vs. individuals as such we will have an apples to apples comparisson of blog traffic and popularity.
We all know that fresh content is the driver of blog traffic. Individual bloggers such as Manolo, Sassy, JOve et al will be hard pressed to keep up with blogs maintained by a group.
It’s not just about traffic statistics, or politics, or journalism. What constitutes a blog I guess is the CONTENT.
Just about anyone can use a blog!
In fact, according to a Technorati report, there are approximately three million blogs being tracked by mid-2004. And, that number is continuously growing as blog software, tools and other applications become more accessible to individuals.
Blog users are as varied as the types of blogs available. However, they may be categorized in to four main types: personal bloggers, business bloggers, organizational bloggers and professional bloggers.
As the popularity of blogging grows, more and more individuals are finding different ways to use blogs. US Presidential Candidates in 2004, for example, have started using blogs as part of their campaign strategy. It will not be surprising, therefore, if more types of people begin to use blogs. (Shai Coggins, About.com)
Thanks Yuga for inviting me here. I think this is a very interesting entry and the comments are all insightful.
My $0.02.
Why not just “dilute” the Hits factor in the ranking equation and add more weight to Votes? Right now, I think the formula’s biased towards high-traffic sites. I bet if INQ7 decides to join the fray, it’ll be on top for eternity :P and I don’t need a dictionary to know that it isn’t a blog.
The vote system is not foolproof but it is the qualitative nature of the vote (I like this over this) that should, in the end, tell us which is (or isn’t) the top Pinoy blog, not traffic statistics.
If there’s anything that would likely be referenced by this debate, it would be the nature and intention of Inside PCIJ as well.
I admit that Inside PCIJ defies categorization for me. It clearly does not reflect news articles that can also be read in print media, but its posts are written by journalists with all the comprehensive content and neutrality that comes with the field.
In a sense, it brings us the news. But it’s news that’s written by writers and analysts outside their normal print articles, perhaps specifically for a blog-reading public.
At the moment, I don’t know if the nature of its content belies its own unique method of self-expression, or if it reflects the same aspects that we see in a daily newspaper.
Maybe we can apply the same argument of Intent as that of Citizen Watch here?
As I started blogging, I simply know “Blog” as an online journal, acts like a diary maybe but not limited to that. It can cover every thoughts and ideas the owner has. Some say there’s no limit on blogs. But there should be rules for blogs. Some hosting company have Agreement, TOC’s etc. and in some way can control prohibited contents of ones blog. In a way or another, one should know his/her limits. Morally it can count. So far, Im not clear to what a real blog should be… true-blue / half-blood
“A blog is a personal diary.”
I think INSIDE PCIJ website does not meet that kind of requirement. At a first glance, I would never give the impression that it’s a blog site. I view it as a NEWS SITE, the HEADLINES of the news! It may not contain all of the contents of the newspaper, but it does have the headline news..
It could fall into the group blog category, if and only if there’s interaction between the authors. However I see no such interaction among them at all. Comment interaction does not count. It does not make a website a blog.
Also, a blog does not contain itself into one topic only. It should be very diverse!
For the record, I have nothing against the INSIDE PCIJ website because it’s really informative! :) We’re just talking about its possibilities of being a blog or not. c”,) Nothing personal.
A blog is a blog is a blog is a blog.
This whole issue’s resolution can probably be found in the query, “What’s in a blog?”
Maybe we should accept Yuga’s earlier definition that a blog is a compendium of time posted posts, be it essays, reviews, stories and the like.
Looking back at the etymology of the word blog, we all know that the word was derived, or should i say, an abbreviated form of the word web log, which can be considered an online diary.
Only know does the confusion happen because so much has been done to blogs. they now come in so many forms.
What i could suggest is that maybe we can come up with a set of guidelines that will discern the blogs from the nonblogs.
That could probably help solve the issue.
Fine points there Sean and Max.
I am sending out a short notice to the members of Pinoy Top Blogs and let’s hear what everybody has to say about these.
“Blogging” has a really vague coverage, but I want us pinoy bloggers to really define it a bit more amongst ourselves and re-shape how we look at “true-blue” blogs and “half-blood” blogs.
Personally, I’m all for leaving it in and observing how the reader posts turn out. Quite a lot depends on whether or not the readers actually start posting, I think.
If anything, I think MaxLimpag’s defense clarifies that this is really not some crass attempt at publicization via PinoyTopBlogs. He raises some excellent points regarding blogging intent as well.
Sean,
Again, the disclaimer above but with the clarification that I am not involved in the Sun.Star Network – which runs the website. I merely oversee a part of it (Cebu) and I sometimes volunteer on projects I am interested in like the blogs.
I have been pushing since last year for a blog to be eventually handled by readers because I believe that readers should have more involvement in a news publication – beyond reading the articles. I tried something last year for Sun.Star Cebu (using Pivot – no database backend) but deadlines crushed me and I wasn’t able to finish organizing it.
>>
You’re partly right. Some of them are that. But many are posts written solely for the blog. I myself wrote an article there – the blog posting was eventually picked up by the network. I submitted that article only to Citizen Watch.
As the site progresses, though, I hope it will have less of these and more of reader postings – which was the reason Citizen Watch was put up in the first place. The facility for greater reader involvement is there, what needs to be done is to encourage readers to use it. You do not take it out because the readers aren’t using it yet.
>
Yes. I understand that and I know the website staff understand that. The only reason why there are still postings of links to the articles (instead of just, say, a single post summary of news related to the Arroyo issue) is that readers aren’t posting articles yet. They feel more comfortable writing their thoughts using the comments facility. They have been invited, some through e-mail, to post their thoughts as blog articles and not just through the comments facility. A few have said they would. Maybe in the next few days or weeks, we’d see that.
The intention in putting out the site was for readers to be more involved in the publication. It’s not so crude as to “advertise†the site because the Sun.Star site is definitely more popular than the Citizen Watch blog. The blog represents less than one percent of the website traffic. The website gets millions of page views weekly.
But I think the issue here isn’t really on labels. It’s about the listing in PinoyBlog. I’m at fault here because I was the one who encouraged them to list the site there, again not for advertising but just to be part of the community. I say not for advertising because the blog is being promoted in the Sun.Star network home page and the home pages of the different branches, which get a huge amount of traffic. It’s being promoted in print – in the different Sun.Star papers. My wife wants to take the listing out. I say it’s a mistake but my thoughts don’t count – it’s the website’s decision.
Thanks Sean for the very good points you raised.
I would like to note that my e-mail was written in haste. In it, I mentioned that it appeared that an editorial board was screening postings for Citizen Watch. It appears that I was wrong, though, and I thank MaxLimpag for the quick clarification.
That said, I have to say that the articles in Citizen Watch do look as though they are being reflected from a printed publication. The column headings and location placements at the beginning of each article, for example, are quite obvious.
If these posts are copies of actual printed news articles, then my point is that a blog should really be more than a collection of such articles to begin with. Otherwise we might as well be reading a news site.
For that matter, however, I believe that the Citizen Watch blog will most likely develop further as their readers hand in more independent submissions for posting. But seeing the site as it looks now, I must unfortunately stand by my current perception: That Citizen Watch appears to be posting only news articles culled from its printed media.
I do look forward to seeing them prove otherwise, though.
My blog at first glance looks like a website, but if you look more closely, I post everyday. My blog has menus, faq, and a store like a site, bit is updated daily with the newest info on cell phones. So whats constitutes a blog, I am not sure. I think maybe blogs are updated more often then typical websites.
Yuga,
Good morning. I’d like to raise a few points on this issue. Before that, a disclaimer: I am part of the Sun.Star network. I am Sun.Star Cebu’s online editor. The Sun.Star blogs, among them Citizen Watch, are a project of Sun.Star Network Online. My only involvement in the Sun.Star website is to oversee the content of Sun.Star Cebu and two other Cebu sites.
I think the Citizen Watch is a blog. Although labels are unimportant I’d like to raise a few points because I have been pushing for the Sun.Star network to go “blogging†since last year and The Cat’s comment implies that Citizen Watch doesn’t belong in the blogs listing and is intruding into it for advertisement. I beg to differ and I have to point this out because I was also the one who told the moderator to enlist Citizen Watch in the Pinoy Top Blogs project (incidentally, the moderator is my wife)
Citizen Watch is meant to be a blog, albeit not a personal one but as a group journal. It is being managed by a blog script. It is not an online news site (news site here meaning “not a blogâ€) because:
a.) The posts are not limited to work of journalists. In fact, it is meant to be a venue for Sun.Star readers to actually post their articles on issues pertaining to the Arroyo presidency. Unfortunately, only one reader submitted a post – the rest just feel comfortable expressing their views in the comments section of posts.
b.) It does not follow the rigid structure of a news site. There are no sections delineating opinion from news, although the posts are categorized as such.
c.) The display of stories is chronological and does not reflect the hierarchy of news values of a media organization. I think this is a crucial feature that differentiates a “blog†from a news website. Check out news websites and you’d see that the arrangements of stories follow a hierarchy of what the media organization thinks as newsworthy. Look at Citizen Watch and you’d see that there are no such hierarchies of so-called news values.
d.) Sean says an editorial board screens postings. There is no such board. The site is moderated mainly by the network online editor, with help from Sunnex staff and (at times) me. The “moderation†is mainly to check whether the submitted posts contain libelous statements and obscenities (we have to screen these out because we are a general readership site).