A B logger or a b LOGGER?

Is the medium worth more than the message?

Robert Scoble, in wondering whether or not Live Spaces is a huge as they say, has laid down some de finitions for what blogging is.

I have purposely never done this.  Rather, it's safer to list characteristics of blogging.  Putting blogging in a box is like saying that painting is only French Renaissance and never anything but, because, dammit, we like flowers.

Robert says:

First, let’s define what a blog is, at least enough to count for this purpose.

1) Have original content. Spam blogs that are copied off of somewhere else don’t count.

2) Have at least 500 words of new text-based content every month. Things that look like Flickr streams aren’t blogs, sorry.

3) Have at least two posts in at least the past 30 days. If you aren’t posting, you’re not blogging.

4) I don’t care if you have comments, have trackbacks, have blogrolls, or any of that.

So his definition is a production model.  Now, to be fair, Scoble was defining this to see if Live Spaces blogs were actually in operation and providing information.  He wasn't necessarily trying to outlaw other types of casual blogging.  His main concern was that MSFT was overblowing their importance to the blogging world.

(How he's planning to count the Japanese spam blogs, I don't know - Live Spaces is very Asian populated).

But the real question is, Is a blog defined by its content or by its communication?

I vote for communication, if only because it's a more flexible definition.  Having a rigid definition of blogging is unnecessary.  There's no blogging oversight committee telling us what a blog is or is not.  The goal is the conversation and the vehicle for community.

Does this water down the definition?  Absolutely.  Does that harm anyone?  Absolutely not.

Is Microsoft overstating their importance?  Probably.  Does that harm anyone?  Probably not.

The Microsoft drive to sell themselves naturally leads to them moving statistics around that are impressive on the surface and don't have much depth.  Much like Netscape.com's traffic numbers.  Yes they get a lot of hits - but not out of real interest.  They get hits from people who still use Netscape as a browser and can't figure out how to change their home page.

In related news, Richard McManus notes that Live Contacts beta is out.

Today George Moore, GM of Windows Live, announced the Windows Live Contacts Gadget beta at the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference, in Auckland New Zealand (I'm here at the conference courtesy of Microsoft NZ). Live Contacts provides programmatic access to a user's contact list, providing secure access to 400+ M active users with 12B contact records. The user is in full control over their personal data, George said.

Here's the official word:

"Learn how, with nothing more than a little JavaScript, you can allow customers to use their Windows Live Contacts (Hotmail/Windows Live Mail and Messenger contacts) directly from your Web site."

A few months back, I had lunch with George and we talked a lot about Live and social networking and traffic management (like on roadways).  Ultimately what we were talking about was community.  The message I've come away with in my chats with George and the other people working on Windows Live is that they really do get social networking.  They're still looking for the perfect way develop the killer social app, but they really do understand it.  I think a quick reading of my blog will indicate I'm predisposed to complain about Microsoft more than praise it, so I consider this a pretty big statement.

Because of this, I am willing to give Windows Live Spaces and other current Live apps the benefit of the doubt.  I have been impressed with the Live team's ability to speed up release cycles, to take chances, to weather the predictable criticism (even from me), and to remain excited about their mission.  Has their stuff released thus far been exciting?  Nope.  Do they have what it takes to evolve into exciting?  Hell yes!

So, let's allow them their hubris.  We're smart enough to discount it ourselves.  They want to say they're the largest blogging provider even if we really have to search our Bloglines subscriptions to find anyone using it - fine.  I'll take grandstanding and rapid release cycles over Vista debacles any day.

Because in the end, blogging isn't about the numbers, its about the conversation and the communication.

Photo:  Nicoloas Raymond

Technorati Tags: microsoft, windows live, live spaces, naked conversations, scoble

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Comments

[Jay Fienberg]

At the end of your post, you indicated what I think is the most important thing: instead of saying something about "blogs", you said something about "blogging".

People who work in the blog-industry always want to promote the importance of "blogs", i.e., some website format that is validated by the existence of the blog industry.

For dramatic reasons only, I'll conjecture that blogs are becoming the worst thing about blogging. In other words, people who love blogging are feeling more and more turned-off by blogs.

But, less dramatically, I think it's simple to say that blogging continues to evolve beyond and outside of blogs.

(I wrote more about this a few years ago--check it out: http://icite.net/blog/200307/blog_matter.html

)

[Jim Benson]

Oh come on! 2003!? Nothing of substance could possibly have been written more than six months ago! :-)