September 26, 2005
Is It a Blog? Does It Matter?
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Debbie Weil gains entree to DaimlerChrysler’s “closed” blog for the press and offers a fascinating report, including a brief interview with the blog’s editorial director, Ed Garsten, wherein he responds to the questions many have raised about the concept of a blog for a select public:
“We realize the idea of a ‘closed’ blog is counter to prevailing thought in the blogosphere regarding openness … But blogging is still an evolving medium that different constituencies will begin to use in ways that make sense to them. We’re not about exclusivity or secretness. We are about communicating with a certain subset of people and aiming our content towards them.”
Amen. Lots of folks took umbrage at the notion of a “closed” blog and took DaimlerChrysler to task for it. Which just goes to prove that the old adage is true — “how quickly the rulebreakers become the rulemakers.”
Surfing the navel-gazing blogosphere-about-blogs-and-pods-and-stuff is getting tiresome because there are so many self-proclaimed gatekeepers who want to say, “Oh, that’s not a real blog.” “Oh, that’s not a real podcast.” “Oh, you have to do this about comments, and this about trackbacks, and this about that, and blah blah blah.”
Listen, here’s a tip: don’t believe any of ‘em. Because frankly, the whole thing’s gonna change before you know it anyway, and you can feel safe in disregarding anybody who says “This is how blogs are going to be tomorrow/next year/ten years from now,” because they have no idea what they are talking about any more than anybody’s predictions about websites in 1995 turned out to be worth a damn.
Remember, for those associations considering/using a blog: The purpose of a blog is not to write a blog. It’s to accomplish something else — to change an attitude, provide a service, make money, whatver your organization’s purpose ultimately is, and whatever you want to use the blog for. If you just want to create a blog because you think it’s the thing to do, then don’t waste your time, because sooner or later it’s not going to be the thing to do anymore and all that effort will have been for nought.
Now, are there good ways and bad ways to use blogs to meet that purpose? Sure. But even those will vary based on what kind of blog you’re writing, what the organization is like, what you want to accomplish, etc. There’s no golden checklist that works for each and every blog that will guarantee your success. A lot of it comes down to common sense and experience (and an understanding that even experience is somewhat limited because once you’ve figured out what works, something new will be introduced or trends will change and what works now suddenly won’t work anymore).
That’s the way it goes. Welcome to the … well, I was going to say welcome to the blogosphere. But in fact, welcome to Web 2.0. Welcome to the 21st Century. Welcome to a world where everything that makes us comfortable — guidelines, criteria, experience — is suddenly a lot less valuable.
Great question. I’m sure I don’t have the answer to what blogs will look like in 5 or 10 years, or even next year, and I’m certainly no authority to judge what the right way to blog is. The point I tried to share in my post was that the interesting thing about Chrysler’s “blog” is that it is really not much different to what I might call a “media extranet” or some other term to describe a login based site targeted solely to journalists. I think it’s a great idea - and one that will probably work for them.
But I do wonder why would they call it a blog? Perhaps they are broadening the definition of a blog, as you suggest. But it seems to me that the only reason they really called their extranet a blog is to capitalize on the buzz around blogs right now. Would anyone have covered it if it were just another media site? I doubt it. So perhaps the true lesson here is that you can use the Internet to achieve what you want - but if you want to create a buzz right now, you just better call it a blog.
Undoubtedly, the worst reason to do anything tends to start with, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool…” For instance, “Wouldn’t it be cool if our association had a blog?” Yeah, but why? I think you’ve addressed it properly by suggesting that the purpose of a blog is to not have a blog. Just like having a website won’t magically increase revenue and members, a blog won’t either.