Blurring the line

Weblogging, or blogging, as we call it today, has existed since the creation of the Internet. As Blockstar chronicles it, the first ever blog was probably Tim Berners Lee's (sometimes called the father of the Internet) list of list of new and upcoming sites. Blogs are basically web journals which are used to chronicle one's thoughts, ideas, activities etc.. But, it is a chronicle. Or is it?

Today, we seem to be slowly blurring the line between the concept of a blog, a forum, message board and community board. The only difference that seems to have remained blogs and the remaining list is the fact that with a blog, only one person has posting rights and he is also the moderator. Otherwise, do you see any difference in the concepts? Thoughts, if that's what they are (I'll come to that later) are let out into the open for people to see and comment on. I will not go into the aesthetics of allowing people to judge and comment on one's thoughts, but the idea just seems absurd. It's probably this reason that most often the blogs we come across (even the personal ones) are usually general and don't delve too much into the person him/her-self but their daily activities and doings. Very few actually coin down what they are actually thinking of, and let it out to the public to view and comment.

Present blogging has become more of a pseudo journalism type activity. Almost all the blogs that I see fit into this category. True, you might say that I don't see the proper blogs, but you must admit that these are also classified as blogs, and hence should meet the requirements before they can be called blogs. These sites find news, and put them up with a few words on what they think about it. Is that what the idea of a weblog is? No! I can't take specific examples here to show you how what most blogs contain doesn't qualify as blog material, but if you look around yourself, you'll see how blogs have just become commentaries, not thoughts. They are not that different, but if you read between the lines, you'll see the difference. A commentary is always based off something which someone else has thought of. A thought, is usually something original. Why am I going into incoherent blabbering? :P Because instead of keeping things simple and true to its purpose, we are mixing them up and the result is a weird mash of low quality content.

How many blogs out there are there with truly quality stuff? How many of them do you know of? Why do you frequent blogs more than forums and message boards? Because you rather read text which makes sense and is from someone who knows that they are talking about! And that is what is reducing with time. Chances are only 3-4/10 blogs that you come across will be worth reading, and only one time reading. Out of them, only 1 might be worth actually subscribing to. Why is this the situation of something that caused so many people to rush to the nearest computer with an Internet connection and set up a blog?

I was trying to classify my blog under something today, since I just couldn't put it under one topic. My blog deals with a number of things, but all related to the Internet. I would call it thoughts and commentary on what goes around and what's new on the Internet. Thoughts and commentary both, because even I sometimes take stories and put up my thoughts on it. And thoughts, because quite a few of my posts are original thinking processes gone overboard. (Like this one! :P) What would you call it?

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Edit: Techcrunch seems to be asking the same question! Well, somewhat...