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Thursday, September 21, 2006
4:54:00 PM EDT
As you all may have seen over in Magic Smoke. I have taken on the role of Journals Product Manager. I have been here at AOL for a little over two years, and since I've been a blogger myself for ages, I'm thrilled to be joining the journals team. I'm also on the AIM Pages team, and will be working on bringing the two products closer together. Social networking/profiling and blogs...that's a natural fit, right?
I tend to ramble about random things in here, and will continue to do that, while keeping you up to date on the state of all things Journals. Or Blogs. Or Jogs.
Actually - here's a good question I put to everyone. Journals or Blogs? And WHY? No poll on this one, I want real answers.
The language of blogging has changed, but really, we've been doing this sort of thing in one form or another forever, haven't we? Let's see...
- In college, we'd leave notes for our friends on a whiteboard stuck on our dorm room door. They'd come by, read, and reply.
- Then you could finger people (Read about it in Wikipedia and get your head out of the gutter!) to read their .plan files. All of the cool game developers I idolized back then had a .plan, and I felt so slick when I finally got a UNIX account that let me make a .plan. I updated my .plan once in a blue moon, but still...it was permanent stuff online from ME that people went to read.
- Next we'd just blab on our "personal homepages." Mine was hosted first by a local NYC ISP, then Geocities (since EVERYONE was on Geocities). I would use the "About Me" area of my site to ramble. I went by the nickname "Bobbi" then (or PMS-Bobbi, depending on where you found me), and the section was called "Bobbi's Blabber" (cute, right?). I'd update it fairly regularly with all sorts of random stuff.
Enter journal. I got a LiveJournal account because my friends all had them, and started really blabbing. I used to sit at work all day with Semagic open and make time-stamped entries about all sorts of mundane info. "9am: I hate Mondays. 11am: Just got out of a meeting. 12:35: had lunch.." and so on. And my friends would read it (and claim to like it!). Some entries would be longer and actually contain real content, but I think the majority of what I wrote would be "this is what I did today..." type stuff.
- Finally, we land on blogs, where we are now. I have things that can be called "blogs" everywhere (MySpace, Newsvine, MSN Spaces, yada yada...), although I really only write here these days.
Again, I turn to Wikipedia. They say that a "journal" is a diary in book form, and a "blog" is simply a display of entries in "reverse chronological order." Hrm. By that definition my college whiteboard was a blog, and my LiveJournal wasn't a Journal, since it isn't a physical book (although I think there's some company selling books of blogs. Really.).
Technically speaking this is an "AOL Journal," and we have "AIM Blogs."
So what do you think? Are these blogs and not journals? Journals and not blogs? For that matter, do you even care what your "place to write reverse chronological entries" is called? Personally - I don't care. I know this is an AOL Journal, but I think I'm going to adopt the term Jogs. Or Blonals (that sounds like some weird body part, huh)?
One more thing. Since I'm new to this product as a manager and all, I want to get out and start reading. Leave me a link to YOUR site, and tell me what you think it is - a Journal, a Blog, neither, both... Feel free to ask the question in your own journal too! The more asking the merrier.
Welcome to the first ever "unofficial" AOL Journals Linguistics Investigation! Comment and join in on the fun!
Tags: BamBam, blogs, journals
Written by stephaniebambam Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
4:54:00 PM EDT
Blogs or Journals?
I tend to ramble about random things in here, and will continue to do that, while keeping you up to date on the state of all things Journals. Or Blogs. Or Jogs.
Actually - here's a good question I put to everyone. Journals or Blogs? And WHY? No poll on this one, I want real answers.
The language of blogging has changed, but really, we've been doing this sort of thing in one form or another forever, haven't we? Let's see...
- In college, we'd leave notes for our friends on a whiteboard stuck on our dorm room door. They'd come by, read, and reply.
- Then you could finger people (Read about it in Wikipedia and get your head out of the gutter!) to read their .plan files. All of the cool game developers I idolized back then had a .plan, and I felt so slick when I finally got a UNIX account that let me make a .plan. I updated my .plan once in a blue moon, but still...it was permanent stuff online from ME that people went to read.
- Next we'd just blab on our "personal homepages." Mine was hosted first by a local NYC ISP, then Geocities (since EVERYONE was on Geocities). I would use the "About Me" area of my site to ramble. I went by the nickname "Bobbi" then (or PMS-Bobbi, depending on where you found me), and the section was called "Bobbi's Blabber" (cute, right?). I'd update it fairly regularly with all sorts of random stuff.
Enter journal. I got a LiveJournal account because my friends all had them, and started really blabbing. I used to sit at work all day with Semagic open and make time-stamped entries about all sorts of mundane info. "9am: I hate Mondays. 11am: Just got out of a meeting. 12:35: had lunch.." and so on. And my friends would read it (and claim to like it!). Some entries would be longer and actually contain real content, but I think the majority of what I wrote would be "this is what I did today..." type stuff.
- Finally, we land on blogs, where we are now. I have things that can be called "blogs" everywhere (MySpace, Newsvine, MSN Spaces, yada yada...), although I really only write here these days.
Again, I turn to Wikipedia. They say that a "journal" is a diary in book form, and a "blog" is simply a display of entries in "reverse chronological order." Hrm. By that definition my college whiteboard was a blog, and my LiveJournal wasn't a Journal, since it isn't a physical book (although I think there's some company selling books of blogs. Really.).
Technically speaking this is an "AOL Journal," and we have "AIM Blogs."
So what do you think? Are these blogs and not journals? Journals and not blogs? For that matter, do you even care what your "place to write reverse chronological entries" is called? Personally - I don't care. I know this is an AOL Journal, but I think I'm going to adopt the term Jogs. Or Blonals (that sounds like some weird body part, huh)?
One more thing. Since I'm new to this product as a manager and all, I want to get out and start reading. Leave me a link to YOUR site, and tell me what you think it is - a Journal, a Blog, neither, both... Feel free to ask the question in your own journal too! The more asking the merrier.
Welcome to the first ever "unofficial" AOL Journals Linguistics Investigation! Comment and join in on the fun!
Tags: BamBam, blogs, journals
Written by stephaniebambam Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
This entry has 13 comments: (Add your own)
-
Hi Stephanie,
I suppose I would call it a journal, not a blog. Blogs allow a bit more freedom when it comes to design and style, and AOL's product has always been somewhat under the blogging radar.
Of course, I call mine a journal, not a blog, so maybe it's all just six of one and a half dozen of the other :).
Charley
http://journals.aol.com/cdittric77/courage -
For the most part I call my a journal but at times I call it a blog. I think it depends on who I am speaking to.
-
Hi BamBam, Congratulations on your new position! I hope that you find it interesting. ...as to the Journal/Blog thing...I personally think of a Blog, as a place to chat with others on a particular subject...or to exchange thoughts and ideas...I think of a Journal as a sort of platform where one can get a little moreinto the subjects or questions that are on ones mind, and just might be on the minds of others also...and a public journal gives others the opportunity to respond and/or expand upon those things that you might desire to share with others through writing them down as food for thought! So there you have it from me....Myrna L. Lavinder-Cox Journal..lavindergr Good Luck in your new adventure
-
Oops. Forgot to add a link:
http://journals.aol.com/pagadan/JoysJournal/
(My blog includes helpful house hints & links, seasonal storm coverage, publication news, book reviews, & Architecture of the Imagination)
7/28/07 5:15 AM