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Blogs and forums - is there much of a difference?
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I have been using forums since 2000 (on ezboard) and I started blogging in 2002 (on LiveJournal). So I've done a bit of both for quite a few years now.
When I joined ezboard, forums were extremely popular. There were a lot of big boards where anyone could just come along and post. Blogging seemed to be a bit more intimate.
It seems to have gone the other way for some people, with blogs taking over. I've noticed people who think they sit squarely in one camp or the other, some being diehard forum users, others being 100% bloggers.
Are you sure about that? Let's break it down...
Content is king.
A blog is focused on the content, right? But don't forums have a focus on content too? Can you go off-topic on both? Do you?
Perhaps blogs are a place to store the content, and forums are a place to discuss it. However...
Comments are the new forum.
If you post a blog entry and people comment on it, how is that different from writing something in a forum and having people comment on it?
Would you post the same stuff in a forum that you'd post on a blog? Surely it depends on the forum!
The author of the content.
If you have your own blog, it's expected that you write the content for it. But wait a minute, what about guest posts or company blogs?
On a forum, everyone starts topics... and on a blog, only one person starts the topics. Hold on though, can't you configure the security settings to do the exact opposite? Allow forum users to reply but not start topics, and allow blog commenters to post new entries instead of just commenting?
Blog, CMS, Wiki, Forum...
Now let's go beyond blogs and forums. Why do some people look at a blog and say "who wants to read about what someone has for lunch"? Why do others look at a CMS and say "that's so Web 1.0, give me a Wiki"? And why do some bloggers scoff at forums as if blogs are a completely different thing? Equally, why do some message board users think that blogs are written by people who have nothing better to do with their time?
I could live without the labelling - both the Web 1.0 / 2.0 nonsense, and whether you have a blog or whatever...
There is one thing in common.
All of the above have a major connection: they are all used to build a website. This is why over at
Injader.com I decided on the tagline, "Websites are back". The overall focus is on helping people to build sites that fulfil their needs from the outset - rather than starting with a blog, then adding bits and pieces that don't hang together very well. Running several different systems on your site just makes things complicated, and often requires your visitors to sign up more than once just to comment. This is not good!
Regardless of the system you choose, if you're on the web, you have a website - or you use someone else's (such as YouTube). A blog is just one component of a website. So is a forum. So is a photo gallery. If you only choose to do one or two of these things on your site, then that's fine. Don't do it all if you don't have the content for it.
Open questions.
I have deliberately raised a lot of questions here to see if you have any particular thoughts on any of this. Also, I have intentionally set up a few blog entries that I will be writing in the near future.
Posted by Ben on November 22, 2007 22:56 | Permalink | Hits: 1572
Tags:
blogging, bloggers forum, message boards, websites, injader, web 2.0
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