Illustration of Derek Powazek by Adam Ellis

Public Service Announcement

As always, we’re happy to be mentioned, but let’s just be clear on this:

Fray. Is not. A blog.

Fray comes from 1996, before the word “weblog,” before the vast sums of cash being driven around in dump trucks for anyone with a business plan, before the hype about portals, about community, about VRML.

No, wait. VRML was first.

I suppose I’m to blame. I added Storyblog to the site a while back to link to outside stories. Perhaps I confused the more slow-moving journalists. Sorry about that. My bad.

Just for future reference, then: Storyblog is a section of Fray in a weblog format. A weblog format is short pieces of content, in reverse-chronological order, updated frequently. Fray is magazine about personal storytelling that features stories up to 3,000 words long and is published monthly at best. I think the difference is obvious.

Believe it or not, there were personal websites before the age of the blog. And for those of us fogies born in that era of web history, the confusion of the word “weblog” with the word “website” is as annoying as it is perplexing.

Now I know how my geeky mentors felt when they lectured be about confusing “net” and “web.” These kinds of distinctions are felt passionately, if only by a certain few.


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Hi, I’m Derek. I used to make websites. Now I grow flowers and know things. I’m mostly harmless. More.