Soon, they'll all have them...

[tinyjo]

You know blogging's mainstream when the BBC are writing about it :) Is there a different word to describe the more diary like sites from the list o links type sites - they seem to come under the blanket heading of blogs these days.

Comments

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I believe "online journal" = diary, "weblog" = list of links but I read something interesting recently on this subject, when I find it I'll post the URL.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I guess so. I get confused because some of these places (like http://www.notsosoft/blog) actually seem closer to diarys than list-o-links but get included in weblog articles like this. It's a pretty fine line I guess.

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I can't find it. There's something on www.plasticbag.org and I think Meg from notsosoft was ranting about the Bloggies which linked to some articles.

[oxfordslacker.livejournal.com]

At first I thought that he was taking a deliberately inclusive definition (I too would tend to call diary type things 'journals' and include both those and link type things under 'blogs') but then at the end of the article he says 'there are now more than 400' bloggers in the UK, so fuck knows what he was thinking of there. I mean www.bloggers.com has 13000, AFAICT. Could be a typo, I s'pose.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's a good point - I hadn't spotted that. I don't think there's only 400 of any of the types of sites we've mentioned. It seems an odd figure to pull out of the air when it would have been just as easy to quote that stat from Blogger.

Ah-ha

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Scratch the above. I bet it comes from here - http://gblogs.threadnaught.net/ - 419 registered UK blogs. I guess the idea is to weed out those like us who aren't considered "serious" bloggers :)

Meta update

[oxfordslacker.livejournal.com]

This week's issue of NTK, one of my favourite blogs, leads with a (characteristically sarcastic/suspicious) article about 'The Bloggies'...

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

This guy makes a couple of good points but they're nearly lost in the arrogant ranting...

http://www.nobody-knows-anything.com/websuck.html

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It seems to start with the assumption that you want people to read your journal which is where it falls down for me. As far as I'm concerned, the trick is to not mind/be flattered if other people do read your journal (and be aware that it *is* a public forum) but also not mind/feel hurt if people don't. I feel like if I was writing for other people then I would lose the thing I enjoy about journalling - the cathartic effect of pouring out my whinges. Its nice if people read them, but somehow just the fact that they *could* read them is enough for that effect.

I subscribe to the view that from my point of view, most web journals do suck (use the random function at your peril), in that I don't enjoy reading them. However, that has no bearing on whether or not they should be written and I would never suggest that someone should be making an effort to make their journal more readable to me. I guess the point is that it's my choice - if I don't think they're good, I don't have to read them.

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

Yup, I agree with all of the above.

Especially the random journal bit, the few blogs/journals I read by people I don't know I've found by a chain of referral from people I do.