02 December 2005

The Huffington Post is not a blog

a niche blog on blogging
called the Blog Herald
started a series last week
on starting a blog

but i was distressed to discover
that the original intent
of the expression 'web logging'
(to log your websurfing
with public annotations)
has gone entirely by the boards

as they offer you just two options:
a personal-diary-style blog
or a topical-niche blog




online personal diaries came before blogs

and when the words 'blog' and 'weblog'
started being applied to them
i was flattered at first
(*ahem* having coined the term)

but there's a problem here
that everyone, on or off the Net
knows what an online journal should be
but not-at-all what an
original-definition-weblog
should be

so the former definition is tending to
usurp the latter
through sheer ignorance

so i'd like to take the term back
from online journalling
and make them find their own neologism




the Blog Herald is also
77 days in
to a 100-day project
recommending
"100 blogs in 100 days"
(without topical restrictions)

which i'll confess
i haven't even skimmed
(though i'm a faithful fan
of the Herald itself) because

the Herald being itself narrowly topical

even after reading it all year
i still know absolutely nothing
about the Blog Herald editor
(or editors) as people

so why should i trust their judgment
on topics outside their niche?




my primary conscious purpose
on 17 December 1997
in creating (then) Robot Wisdom WebLog

was to 'unify my brand' on the Net

because i was posting widely
on Usenet/netnews
and on my website

but readers in any given newsgroup
or readers of any given webpage

saw only that one limited aspect
of my interests




from the first it was for me
a matter of honor
to link
everything
i found interesting

without censoring the frivolous
or controversial

with John Lennon
beside AnaCam and JenniCam as
let-it-all-hang-out
role models

(although this ideal is probably
impossible to fully reach)




adding an mp3 jukebox
again extends that ideal

for to segregate
my musical choices
in a separate blog
would make as little sense
as to segregate
into separate mp3-blogs
my mainstream music-favorites
from my esoteric ones




the unit-measure for blogging
is the blogger

and you subscribe or unsubscribe
to the blogger-as-a-whole

based on whether you find them
simpatico

(i've always wished that someone
would create a partial duplicate or
RWWL Digest
that echoes just my mainstream links)




so my main problem with Slashdot
is that there's no 'them' there

i just don't know who's interested in what
and who understands what

so the news-stream it offers
remains largely unfocused sludge




and now the Huffington Post, too
has become almost unreadable
because it aggregates
100 different windbags
with no common voice