[thelist] What's with this blog thing, anyway?

Burhan Khalid burhankhalid at members.evolt.org
Thu Mar 28 15:09:01 CST 2002


On Blogging :

	I had heard about blogs for a while, and had perused some of the sites of
bloggers, and their respective backends (moveabletype.org, greymatter, et.
al.). I think blogs are just an easy way to get a very crude CMS out on the
web. Basically, you set one of these up, give certain people authoring
permissions, and wala. They can post stuff for you to read, and people can
comment on your thoughts. It reminded me of the pre-internet days when BBS
were all the rage. Some guy with a multi-port got a BBS service running,
and everyone who dials in can post their own thoughts, etc. Although BBS
were a little bit complicated than that (there were many games that people
played on a BBS).

	Blogs can be different things to different people. If you are a "newbie"
and just want an easy way to get your own journal going, blogging is
probably the way to go. If you are a developer and your site/online
presence needs some sort of community bulletin board, then you could
download the blog backends, and customzie them to suit your needs. Most of
them are open source and free.  As far as indicators go, I don't think
blogs are viable indicators of the economy. If anything, they are proof
that people who before used the internet on a first tier basis (surfing,
email checking, etc.) are now moving in to content creation, and blogs are
making life easy for them.

	I have just started messing with blogs and have put one up for testing and
squashing bugs, etc. In my opinion, blogs, or anything that makes the
internet experience more personalized and add to the meat of the internet
is a Good Thing.  Now people are finally starting to look at the other side
of the internet coin (as opposed to e-commerce). The internet is a tool
that improves communication, and blogs are just another way to get
information on the web.

Just my $0.02
Regards,
Burhan Khalid




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