Bringing Blogging into Question…

Internet — Joe Anderson @ 1:34 pm Saturday 24 September 2005

I don’t think Blogshares move of deleting non-blogs was meant to bring into question what a blog was, but it did, for me anyway.

Any argument erupted on the forums; some people argued that a site like Blogshares itself should be removed from the game as it wasn’t a blog, though other’s argued it was a blog. Then somebody moaned they used forum software for a blog (he he) and that was removed as it was a forum. I maintain my views, which are pretty simple.

A blog isn’t a news site, a blog should be full of opinion.
A blog must be newest post first and have more than 1 article on the homepage, unlike a forum when the newest post in a thread is last.
If a site has a blog on the front page the site is classed as a blog.
Site’s like Digg are classed as blog’s as real people post things.

Some people disagree with this viewpoint, though this is mine. I think most of it is similar to the Wikipedia. Below are a few hard questions to answer like…

Is a podcast site with only one page a blog? The blog is in the audio, so is the site a blog?

I would say yes, but I’m sure many wouldn’t. It makes me a little bit of a hypocrite as it disobeys the above rules; but if the audio is a blog and the site is providing the audio I would class it as a blog.

Is an update log on a front page a blog?

Yep, it is, if it’s in reverse cron.

The way Blogshares works is you can vote blog’s into industries (categories) which is for the QuackTrack index. QuackTrack is the largest blog index. Voting works like this:

Voter Votes ——>>>> Moderator Accepts/Rejects (a moderator is an experienced BlogShares voter) ——>>>> Goes into index

However a voter may vote against an industry a blog is placed in.

The moderator and voter both get a reward in chips (can be swapped for B$, adverts or links).

However a moderator may have an opinion and allow a blog into an industry in which it shouldn’t be in, though they are supposed to follow a strict ruleset. A moderator’s opinion of a blog maybe different to that of an admin or voter and they may allow a blog into the index which isn’t a blog at all.

I expect the B$ markets to suffer dramatically from this move as big services which have been removed like MSN Spaces and Blogger are the most valuable site’s in the index, and make up for about 1/3 of all links tracked by Blogshares.