When thinking about what a blog is, one of the things that grabbed my attention about traditional definitions was that they only focused on one side: the presentation to the reader. That is, a blog was a site constituted by texts or entries, cronologically ordered, in such a way that the newest note appeared on top of the page.

Not that this is wrong, but I think this definition is incomplete. In my opinion, at least two more things should be included: the facility to update the contents and visual presentation, and the emphasis on taking advantage of the collaborative capabilities of the Net.

First, one of the biggest differences between a typical personal website, built in HTML with Dreamweaver, and a blog, takes place mostly in the upload interface. A blogger doesn’t need to work with the codes practically never, at least not in the contents. He can upload everything from a very simple style sheet, where font styles are defined very much like in a word processor. And the visual aspect doesn’t take long either: it’s possible to define the look of our blog with a simple template, which we can personalize if we want to. The point is: it’s much easier to maintain a blog than an old personal website, that requires HTML codes updating, links checks, uploading everything by FTP, etc.

Second, there’s the issue of collaboration. One of the reasons of the success of the blog format is its emphasis on the collaboration between users and bloggers. Those who comment on our site not only can let us know their disagreement with our ideas and even insult us; but also, and mostly, they can complement our information, add more of it, correct some affirmations, etc. Indeed, a blog is really useful when the blogger and his readers contribute to make it that way. The responsibility of the blogger doesn’t end in writing decently about interesting things, as it happens to journalists. The blogger also has to encourage participation, something we’re learning about. Tools like trackbacks and blogrolls reaffirm this collaborative position: they point to the development of discussions and the construction of a community of ideas.

Of course, the famous collaborative construction of ideas is not exclusive of blogs. Other tools, such as Wikis and phorums have long been doing this. Fortunately, they’re solutions that can complement in a relatively simple way. But let’s not forget this: an important distinction between blogs as successful supports, and other forms of rather unsuccessful contents presentations -such as portals- is based on the different forms of taking advantage of the collaboration capacity that the Internet provides, and the easier way to maintain the site -in content and graphic presentation as well. Not everything is the presentation to the reader: sometimes we have to see that bloggers practices and the architecture of a support has a lot to do with the final definition of the format.