There have been rumours this week that CNN is about to buy Mashable. While wading through a few reports – all basically just rehashing the original Reuters story – it struck me that Mashable is still sometimes referred to as a ‘blog’. This seems an odd label to my eyes.
Mashable is a news site. It focuses on social media, but covers technology, business, entertainment and current affairs. With 50 million page views a month and 50 members of staff, it’s a significant enough operation that a sum of £128m has been mentioned as its value to CNN. This doesn’t particularly tally with most people’s idea of a ‘blog’.
The web log
‘Blog’ is short for ‘web log’ – a fair description of the online diaries which were originally described using the term. Meanings change over time – nowhere more rapidly than on the web – but something of that original intent remains. If someone says ‘blog’, most of us will tend to think of a rather self-indulgent site that is written by a single individual.
Although founded by Pete Cashmore in his Aberdeen home, Mashable no longer fits that description (if it ever did). This takes us to another definition of ‘blog’.
Internet news outlets
Many news outlets that have only ever been accessible via the web are often described as blogs. Mashable is one. The Huffington Post is another. These sites have often grown from being run by just one person to having large editorial teams. They may have been run – and may still be run – using blog software, such as WordPress.
More traditional news outlets such as Reuters or newspapers like The Guardian or The Daily Mail also have an online presence, but this isn’t how they began. The word ‘blog’ is sometimes used to make this distinction, even though the two types of sites may have much in common – particularly now that the mainstream media has adopted many traditional blog features, such as the facility for readers to comment underneath an article.
Blogs on blogs on blogs
To confuse things still further, different people refer to different elements of a website as a ‘blog’. A whole site might be considered a blog; a blog-formatted section on a site might be considered the blog; a single article is often called a blog; and I’ve also seen comments referred to as blogs. That last usage makes the person who wrote the article the ‘author’ and those commenting ‘bloggers’.
Are you a blogger?
Of course it’s more conventional for the article author to be termed the ‘blogger’ but even here there’s a difference in meaning. To be called a blogger can be a compliment if the speaker is implying that you are innovative and independent. However, the word can also be used sneeringly due to its associations with amateurism.
You can always spot someone seeking to exploit a writer by their use of the word ‘blogger’. Writers get paid. ‘Bloggers’ are asked to contribute for free with promises of ‘great exposure for your writing’.
