In this article The author asks a snarky-good question: "When are they going to learn what a blog is? Hint: Free Republic isn't one, doesn't have one, and its commenters are not 'bloggers.'"

While I get the distinction between "blogs" and "discussion forums" at the ends of the spectrum, for me there are clearly grey areas in the middle.

• At one end you have single-author no comment blogs (Instapundit).
• At the other you have anonymous discussion forum postings (MFO).
• In the middle you have comment blogs, group blogs (Volokh), edited group blogs with comments (Slashdot and Fark), and mass group blogs with comments (Kos, FreeRepublic)

Is the distinction merely about the number of potential editors or thread starters or whether those thread starters have some sort of editing process?

As a person who both blogs AND posts to discussion threads, I'm as confused as WaPo evidently is.

posted by Tim at 2:09 PM

Robert Scoble of Microsoft has dinner with the fired Google blogger, Mark Jen. He was the guy fired by Google because of stuff he wrote on his blog. A while back there was a bit of controversy when his blog mysteriously disappeared off the web. People began to suspect he'd been sacked. Or worse! Turns out he had been sacked. And if you had read his blog back then (it's been toned down) you might understand why.

When I first read Mark's blog comments, I thought he was a litle too bold in his commentary. He did appear quite negative. If I had just started at Google, I would have been writing, "Damn, free food!" Not, "There must be an evil consipracy to keep you here 24/7." That's just bad manners. I equate that to visiting a friend's house for dinner and telling him and his wife how bad the food tastes. Not good manners. Not a good thing to do.

So the host asked Mark to leave on account of his bad manners. Was that evil? No.


posted by Tim at 6:51 AM

You can watch all of the Super Bowl Ads you missed over at iFilm. I think my favorites were the AmeriQuest ads: Don't be quick to judge.

The Olympus m:robe commercial was the best new gadget; it looks very cool. I like the iPod, and I like my digital camera. I just never have both at the same time. Hmmm, I just worry about battery life on something like that, though.

The Budweiser parachute ad made me laugh out loud (but not as loud as the AmeriQuest ads), while the thanking the troops ad brought a tear to my eye.

GoDaddy.com was probably the most effective. I have never heard of GoDaddy.com and now I will probably never forget it! BTW, the NFL forced Fox to pull a second GoDaddy.com ad which was supposed to air later in the game. But after they saw the first one, they nixed it. Supposedly.

UPDATE: There's a short discussion of the merits of the Napster subscription program at Scobleizer.

posted by Tim at 6:48 AM