When AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315 million, I had to chuckle at the news reports calling it a blog. Most classify news sites like HuffPo, Mashable, and Engadget as blogs because there really is no other way to classify them right now. They’re not considered mainstream news sites because they’re not attached to an entity that existed before (or whatever other reason you want to use to tag them as blogs). Still, how can sites that get millions of visitors of month and who pay their writers and editors still be considered blogs?
Let’s look at how Wikipedia defines a blog:
The original “Web Log” was designed as a place for people to put their personal thoughts online. It was for ranting, venting, displaying, and sharing.
Today, many blogs have “grown up” to the point that they’re gargantuan, multi-faceted websites with communities, press credentials, and revenue streams that would make the NY Times jealous.
Engadget lost a couple of its editors today and it’s big news. People will be watching as they move to their next projects. AOL has their “way” of doing things that is geared towards pageviews and advertising dollars. Techcrunch and other “blogs” hold glorious events and conferences around the world.
All of these point to my premise that there should be a differentiation between someone’s blog and these huge sites that are still being called blogs.
Any ideas?
Glad to see you all adopted Disqus. Anyway, Both Engadget and Mashable to post in reverse-chrono order, among many other big names. Huffpost has a much more news theme layout, so I’d definitely want a new name for their establishment. Nonetheless, you point stands where the oldies consider sites like this and others “blogs” because they don’t want to associate these new establishments with the big dogs, with some companies even being picky about giving press passes and info based on blog/news outlet status. Surprisingly, sites like BBC, CNN and so on have adopted the blog style in their post view pages, which shows how significant blogs are. No longer are 3 column sites reigning, but the left content/right menu style dominates among the big dogs.