The evolution of the website
January 18, 2005
I think we are witnessing the beginnings of a trend. Traditional websites are taking on the characteristics of blogs. Blogs are the new website (RSS is the new email - in the generic sense of delivery content I've opted in to receive).
Blogs are what websites should have been on day one. They live up to the idea we were trying to achieve when the Internet went commercial - interactive, community, easy to create. Blogs are easy-to-use tools that allow anyone to become a publisher. They inspire conversation. All this chatter is spawning new ideas, creating new friends and generating revenue.
But, what makes a blog a blog? If Fortune, added comment fields and trackbacks to their homepage content, would they have a blog? The content is still reviewed by an editor but created with TypePad - an easy to use content management system, do we have a blog then? Or take the opinion column from your local newspaper and allow hundreds of people to participate, have we created a blog?
c|net is a good example of one publisher whose website is morphing into a blog. I think we will see blog-like tools added to websites as publishers realize the benefits of building community, inspiring conversation and growing their reach and marketability with every story they write (trackbacks and search engine friendly features of blogs). c|net has added comment capabilities to each article, they include author profiles, and they even added trackbacks.
Besides the obvious format differences, compare this page on c|net to this page on Weblogs, Inc. What is the difference? Has c|net crossed over into the blogosphere? Do the mechanics make it a blog or is there a spirit that must exist to be considered a blog?
Posted by Bill Flitter on January 18, 2005 12:30 AM
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Just as a note, it appears that ESPN is working on trackbacks as well. Pretty interesting.
Posted by Noah Brier | January 18, 2005 7:43 AM
Posted on January 18, 2005 07:43
Noah, that is very interesting. Just makes sense to do it. Love to hear more examples like that.
Posted by Bill Flitter | January 18, 2005 9:08 AM
Posted on January 18, 2005 09:08
Well, Bill, you know what I think, from the EBIG presentation I gave. I think blogs can come in many forms, containing different kinds of content targeting different kinds of audiences, but they all share:
Immediacy: It has to be updated regularly, although certainly daily posting is not required.
Interactivity: Comments, trackbacks, links to like-minded sites, email provided that goes to a real name...anything to encourage a feeling of dialog, not monolog.
Informality: it's got to sound like a live person wrote it in their own conversational voice.
So your Fortune example is missing the informality, even if they add interactivity. And while portions of the c|net site seem bloggy, the overall look of it is not very bloggy to me.
Blogs are a subset of websites, and even if websites adopt some blog TOOLS or Blog-originated TECHNOLOGY, it won't necessarily make them that site a blog.
Posted by Elisa Camahort | January 18, 2005 1:33 PM
Posted on January 18, 2005 13:33
I certainly agree with your premise and believe that eventually most websites will contain blog like features and all website creation tools will contain blogging functionality.
That said, I don’t think that c|net seems very blog like other than the obvious inclusion of comments. It’s too formal (an occasionally criticism of my blog as well).
It IS pretty clear that blogs will become more tightly integrated with websites and websites will become more blog like in the relatively short term. Beyond that, the term “blog” will probably disappear and blog functionality will simply be an expected feature of most websites.
Posted by Ted Demopoulos | January 20, 2005 9:16 AM
Posted on January 20, 2005 09:16