| A Weblog is a place to share cool stuff you found in yourself or on the Web with other people, and then strangely, also with yourself months later. |
| There's this tendency in the human race to nudge other people, point at something, and say, "Holy crap! Get a load of that!" And there's a tendency to want to look when we get nudged. That's why we get gawkers slowing things down for us every time there's an accident on the highway. That's why we take cameras with us on vacation. That's why sites on the web that give us glimpses into the lives of others or tell us true stories are so popular. Few of us will admit to being voyeuristic, but face it, we all are. Writing weblogs is just another form of the urge to nudge and point, and reading them is another way to be voyeuristic. It's a way to point out the best and the... er, not so best... of the web as we find it, stuff we as readers may never have found on our own. It can be entertaining in and of itself, and offer a peek into the psyche of the weblog's author. Someone had said that if you have a web site, you should keep it updated every day. When I started my own site, I needed a way to keep myself focused, something that would keep me coming back... so I started a weblog. So far it's worked. (The downside, if you want to call it that, is that now everyone comes for the weblog and few people poke around at any of the other stuff. But what the hell.) |
| My definition of a weblog is MetaFilter. (www.metafilter.com) It survives because people chip in with interesting links and/or comments. And I think it works, because almost everytime I log on, the number of registered users has grown. Not only are there links, there are also comments on the links and that adds to the whole experience.
|
| mmm. weblog. i hated them. i love them. it's this little incestuous community that links to each other and to the links others link to. it was a way to go back to updating something daily without getting weighed down with a daily journal entry when i was stressed out. it was a way to put all the links i kept emailing my group of friends about (one excrutiating link at a time) all in one place, and be able to find it later without having to go through three months of sent mail and grepping the mail folder. it ended up being a way to make some new friends, post the little stories that would never make it to my journal because they were too nonsequitur, and to have a little fun. it's no art form. it hardly requires any effort at all. i was already surfing a zillion hours a day and finding links anyway. the only difference was where the text file i was storing the urls was located. |
| I don't think that there is one clear definition of what a weblog is or what it should be. I don't think that any one person can or should define it. If it gets to that point then I probably won't want to do it anymore. A number of years ago I was bitten by a bug that some once called "homepageitis" and I revelled in it. I was recently bitten by another bug and started to write again after not writing anything for a couple of years. My weblog has provided an elastic environment where I feel comfortable just letting it all hang out. |
| A weblog is someone else's timewaster, that they are nice enough to share with you, so that you may waste your time with the same stuff that they do. Happy fun. |
| << | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | >> |
{ Posting to this story took place from 2.17.00 to 2.12.01. The forum is now closed. }