Samizdata

noun. A concept or point within an article on a blog that is not quite grandiose enough to be a ‘meme’.

(coined by Brian Micklethwait)

noun. An unusually high volume output of articles on a blog.

Usage: “Well, 48 hours and 4,195 words later, we’re reaching for our dictionary to check the definition of “significantly.” After that, we’re going to look up blogorrhea.”
– William Quick

noun. The totality of blogs; blogs as a community; blogs as a social network.

(coined by William Quick)

Usage: “The blogosphere has been abuzz with the Trent Lott story for the last few days and many of the blogs are baying for blood!”

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The key to understanding blogs is understanding the blogosphere. Blogs themselves are just a web format, whereas the blogosphere is a social phenomenon. It is hard to overstate the importance of this.

What really differentiates blogs from webpages or forums or chatrooms is that blogs (at least properly implemented ones) are designed from the outset to be part of that shifting internet-wide social network. There have been many attempts to design ‘social software’ but thus far the only effective example is the blogosphere, which was not ‘designed’ by anyone but is an emergent phenomenon.

1. noun. A contraction of weblog, a form of on-line writing characterised in format by a single column of text in reverse chronological order (i.e. most recent content at the top) with the ability to link to individual articles. There is usually with a sidebar displaying links, and the content is frequently updated.

(probably coined by Peter Merholz)

Usage: “Glenn has writen an interesting article about the folly of gun control on his blog”

also see: Warblog, Journal blog, Pundit blog, Tech blog, Group blog

2. verb. To write an article on a blog.

Usage: “Steven Green has just blogged about the joys of Vodka today”

or

“After reading that crap in the New York Times about globalization, I feel a serious need to blog about real world economics”

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The majority of blogs are non-professional (update July 2004: commercial blogs of various sorts are now appearing in increasing numbers) and are run by a single writer. However whether or not a blog has a single author or is a group effort, a key differentiating factor between a blog and other on-line formats (such as forums, wikis etc) is that the main articles (as opposed to just comments) are written by the blog’s owners/members and not by the general public.

Although there are several competing definitions regarding what makes a blog a blog, it can be convincingly argued that, circa 2004, for something published on the web to be a true blog, it must be configured to be readily accessible by the blogosphere. That means although reverse chronological order is a defining feature of a blog, that alone is not enough. If the individual articles cannot be linked to separately via a permalink (rather then just linking to the whole site), then the site in question is not a blog.

This means some ostensible blogs are debatably not really blogs at all (they are merely ‘blog like’ in appearance) by what the developing understanding of what a blog really it.

For example the Guardian, a British broadsheet newspaper, has two blogs and prides itself that it ‘gets’ blogging. However whereas the Guardian Online Blog, which deals with technology, is indeed a blog (and quite a good one), the Guardian main blog, called simply The Weblog¹, is nothing of the sort as you cannot link to individual articles and hence it is not actually part of the blogosphere. Not surprisingly as a result ‘The Weblog’ is largely ignored by other blogs and hardly ever linked to according to the various monitoring services such as Technorati or Blogstreet).

¹ = as of late 2004, ‘The Weblog’ was superceded by Newsblog, which is a proper full featured blog