Blog, short for Web Log, is a website with supercharged
discussion forums. The early popular web
or internet, not the original web used in academia and government/military, was
limited in how interactive the websites was for users. You could leave a comment on some websites,
but the connections and interoperability was limited – especially as we
unfairly compare it to today’s websites and blogs. Blogs open a dialog online that is open to
all to see, for all to learn from universally and create a massive
interconnection of resources.
Still not really sure what is the difference between a blog
and a website? Blogs are websites, but
websites are not blogs. Let’s refer to
each in this way:
Website – digital product catalog without a customer
service or technical support features
Blog – block party with friends and neighbors sharing what
they know on a topic
So a website can’t be successful without a blog? Not entirely true. Yes, blogs are changing the way we use the
web, but blogs are not the solution to all web needs. Traditional websites are viable for a great
deal of what we do on the web. The
Department of Motor Vehicles is a traditional website, and generally ignores
what its users think of the site or need from it. Amazon.com has become a traditional website,
but is becoming more “social”. EBay is a
traditional site now as well, but has along the way paved a course for social
media in general to grow through the creation of the world’s largest yard
sale. What each of these sites have in
common, besides being traditional websites, is that they don’t use blogs on
their sites in general yet. There are
many many blogs about these sites, but to my knowledge there is no blog
component to their sites yet.
Getting started with blogs is easy with so many tools and
information available.
Blogger from Google - Free and easy
Yahoo - Free and easy...good luck finding the link though. I gave up on it.
WordPress - Most popular pro tool, but requires some savvy and experience...and a hosting account.
TypePad - Seth Godin's tool of choice. Easy to use with good features. Inexpensive and flexible.
Or the many, many options to choose from for all types of uses. http://dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/blogs/blog_software/
It is critical to note that a blog is a
destination. A tool like Twitter is an
aggregator and connector. They work well
together, along with the other tools.