Post by D. Glenn Arthur Jr.Post by John SiskerI am new to this newsgroup, but I do have a general question that may sound
rather stupid to some. However, just want is the main difference between a
blog, tweeter and facebook?
A 'blog' (originally short for "web log" but nobody ever says "web log"
any more) is a web site easily (and in theory frequently) updated with
new content displayed chronologically[*]. It can be a collection of
essays on a particular topic, random life updates for one's friends,
collections of links to other sites and news stories, whatever. It's
often all the work of one person, but some blogs are written by teams,
invite guest bloggers, or belong to corporations. A blog can be a
standalone site, or a "notes from the author" column under a comic
strip or a news-and-announcements section on a political organization's
site, and so on.
What you can do on a blog, you could do on an old, pre-"Web 2.0" web
site ... but (a) using blogging tools makes it easier, and (b) you'd
just be reinventing blogs anyhow, regardless of what tool you use.
That said, here's where boundaries get fuzzy: some sites/tools are
pretty clearly blogging tools. But many 'social networking' sites
also incorporate blogging features -- so posting frequent updates to
your FaceBook ... uh, front page? wall? whatever the spot on FB where
people see announcement/diary types of stuff you write ... amounts to
blogging by strict definition, and _may_ also count as blogging by
the "I know it when I see it" interpretation of the word, depending
on what you post there (i.e. how you use the tool).
So FaceBook is a social networking site with blogging features in it.
Dreamwidth, InsaneJournal, LiveJournal, et. al. are basically blogging
sites with social networking features added -- to the point that many
users see them more as 'communities' than blog hosts. They're perfectly
good blogging sites for just straight blogging, but mostly attract the
folks who want blogging-plus-social-networking, and some number of
people who got sucked in by the social networking aspects and then
decided they might as well start blogging since they were already
there.
Twitter is a 'microblogging' tool: even easier to update, but limited
to extremely short posts -- 140 characters. The idea is that you
update your Twitter microblog ("stream") even more frequently than a
regular blog, and initialy the idea was to post truly trivial stuff
there as a "keep in touch with your friends throughout the day, maybe
converse a little" tool more broadcast oriented than chat. Like any
_good_ Internet tool, it was quickly adopted for other uses the inventors
didn't foresee, as well, and you can find a mix of uses there nearly as
diverse as the uses to which people put conventional blogs.
Again, the boundaries are fuzzy: first, the uses people make of these
tools vary in ways that cross whatever boundaries you want to define;
second, the tools themselves, while usually being optimized for particular
types of use (though still being useable for others), incorporate enough
crossover features that even categorizing the tools leaves you with many
cases of "well, XXX is mostly a YYY tool but you have to include it in
the ZZZ category as well". Twitter is designed to be updated -- and
viewed -- via cell phones, as well as in web browsers and (IIRC) standalone
clients, and that's one of its distinguishing features. But I've got
scripts that let me post to LiveJournal and Dreamwidth from my cell
phone using SMS, and folks with smartphones can fire up a web brower
on the phone to read regular blogs, so even that distinction is a fuzzy
one. If you _use_ Twitter and LiveJournal and WordPress for a while,
you can see clear differences between them in terms of what they make
easy and how people _tend_ to use them, but drawing sharp distinctions
so you can say this tool is on this side of the line, and that tool is
on that side of the line, remains tricky. And then we get to tools that
automagically post to Twitter to announce a new blog entry, or bundle up
the day's tweets to post to your blog, and the boundaries get even muddier.
(And then there are 'photoblogs', like Shutterchance; photo-hosting
sites with some social-networking features, like Flickr; 'vlogs',
'podcasts', etc.)
So I hope this has helped you become less confused, while understanding
why you're not likely to get an absolutely clear answer with nice, sharp
dividing lines between different types of tools.
[*] With the caveat that this is a general description rather than
a definition, and is about as accurate as saying that a guitar is
a six-stringed, fretted, plucked instrument with a flat soundboard
and back -- exceptions are trivially easy to find, and are often
important examples, but the thumbnail description still works as a
shortcut as long as this caveat is kept in mind.
--
Due to hand/wrist problems my newsreading time varies so I may miss followups.
"Being a _man_ means knowing that one has a choice not to act like a 'man'."
http://www.dglenn.org/ http://dglenn.dreamwidth.org
D. Glenn Arthur Jr:
Thanks so much for this detailed explanation. Even though there is
better light. Likewise, let me tell you want I had in mind, to see of any of
this can be put into play.
www.shiptoshorecruise.com business in a better perspective. What I was
communications we have with others. Naturally, different aspects of our
business may call for different connections.
tendency to get lost in the shuffle. Isolating these select categories, may
make everything easier for all concerned.