So I had my first D-type “speaking engagement” at a local support group last week. Up there clicking around on the wall-projected web, trying to explain Web logs to a bunch of PWDs who barely use computers. Most of them never used the Internet to look for diabetes stuff at all. *Gasp!* Such an incredible resource…

“So this blog thing, it’s a web site?”

“Well, yes, but a special kind of web site.”

“Special? …”

Confession time here. I never read a book on blogging myself, but “Naked Conversations” appears to be the bible. Gosh darn, I wish I’d had this excerpt with me last week:

Bloggings’ Six Pillars. There are six key differences between blogging and any other communications channel:

1. Publishable. Anyone can publish a blog.You can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is instantly available worldwide.

2. Findable. Through search engines, people will find blogs by subject, by author, or both. The more you post, the more findable you become.

3. Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation. Interesting topical conversations move from site to site, linking to each other. Through blogs, people with shared interests build relationships unrestricted by geographic borders.

4. Viral. Information often spreads faster through blogs than via a newsservice. No form of viral marketing matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.

5. Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get free “home delivery” of RSS- enabled blogs into your e-mail software. RSS lets you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated, saving you search time. This process is considerably more efficient than the last- generation method of visiting one page of one web site at a time looking for changes.

6. Linkable. Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to the tens of millions of people who visit the blogosphere every day.

You can find each of these elements elsewhere. None is, in itself, all that remarkable. But in final assembly, they are the benefits of the most powerful two-way Internet communications tool so far developed.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)