Recently I have been hearing people use the word "blog" incorrectly, so I thought I'd take a minute and try to sort through the confusion. It is confusing, because often a website might be just a blog, but sometimes it's more, and sometimes it's less, and sometimes it's hard to say.

Take this site, for example. Is OakPointCommunity.org a blog?

Well, maybe. There are various definitions of "blog" you can find on the web. Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) a blog is "website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order".

Hmmm.. that's not us, is it? Other definitions from a Google search include:

• .. frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links (www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog)
• .. frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. (www.bytowninternet.com/glossary)

Blogger.com ought to know something about that. They say:

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Well, you could look at this as a personal diary of Oak Pointers (at least for those with computers who have found the site), so calling OakPointCommunity.org a blog is reasonable.

There is another kind of website, though. These are the forums, or message boards. In the early days, they were commonly called bulletin boards. Forums are where people post messages on some subject, and then dozens or maybe hundreds of other people respond, discuss, argue, quote each other, paste links to other sites, and so on. Often these forums are devoted to a specific subject or area like technology, science or politics. We geeks have one of the biggest: Slashdot, a forum devoted to the kinds of subjects techie folks talk about.

Some sites have both a blog and a forum, and in fact that dual format is becoming very popular nowadays. But there are other kinds of websites that aren't bloglike and aren't forumlike. Obviously news sites like news.google.com aren't blogs or forums, they are news sites. Strong informational sites like Ask The Builder or Tom's Hardware are not blogs, and review sites like Engadget aren't either.

What about YouTube and music sharing sites? No, those aren't blogs.

A "portal" is a starting point - Aol.com is a portal, and Google.com is a search portal. Of course AOL also has a lot of its own content, and some of it is bloglike, and there are forums - no wonder people get confused.

Does it matter if you call a forum a blog? Not really; people are going to know what you mean. It can be a little confusing if the site you are talking about has both a blog and a forum: you say "Did you see the post about Hillary at the xyz blog last night?" for example. I'd think you meant in the formal blog part of the site, and wouldn't go looking for it in the forum part. But I'll probably figure that out pretty quickly. You might annoy a real geek very mildly by misusing the word, but who cares about them anyway? Geeks can be pretty annoying themselves, right?

- Tony Lawrence

MSM Exec Limousine Service