Ask anyone you know, and chances are they'll say that blogging is a great example of social media.

They're wrong.

While I don't deny that blogging is a great way to interact on the Web, it is largely a one-way stream of thought that goes against the two-way ideals of social media. While there certainly are comments, notice how one or two people are in control of the main content (and can completely mediate the comments if they want). Also notice the relative lack of community around blogs. While there is community, people would prefer to have their conversations on Twitter, FriendFeed or a phpBB forum than on some blog. Blogs have a lot in common with conventional news Web sites too.

Could you call a conventional news site a blog? I will use washingtonpost.com in this example, though any example will work.

  • Can you comment on any article on washingtonpost.com? Yes. Can you comment on blog posts? Yes.
  • Is washingtonpost.com syndicated via RSS/Atom? Yes. Are blog posts syndicated via RSS/Atom? Yes.
  • Does washingtonpost.com have social bookmarking buttons on its articles? Yes. Do blogs? Generally, Yes.

Here comes the only real difference:

  • Is washingtonpost.com user generated? No. Are blogs user generated? Yes.

Seriously, that was the only real difference I could find. Are blogs more like conventional news Web sites or are conventional news Web sites more like blogs?

What would be the difference between David Broder's column on washingtonpost.com and David Broder's column running on some political opinion blog? I don't see any difference at all. I would easily mistake it, actually.

TechCrunch is considered a blog. It's a one-way blog, where the content is reported in a similar fashion to a newspaper. Yeah, there are about five to ten comments per article on average, but that is utterly pathetic for a blog that consistently ranks in Technorati's top five. In fact, the people at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive seemed to like TechCrunch's reportage so much so that they now display TechCrunch blog posts (like this one) on washingtonpost.com (like this). Is this a good or a bad thing? I say this is really a stretch, having a blog post that is user generated displayed in the same exact format as an article by Dan Balz. Dan Balz is a seasoned journalist, while Michael Arrington started TechCrunch a mere three years ago.

Consumers of conventional and social media are confused in this time of transition. Blogging is so versatile that a lot of the time it can barely be considered social media. Frankly, I am as confused as anyone else. I hope to revisit this post in five years to see what's changed. Anyone want to guess?