Jesse wrote me the other day, inquiring about starting a blog. He told me that he’s been a journaler for many years and wasn’t sure of this blog thing. Since this has been on my mind, i asked him to tell me what he thought the differences were. I think that this is good food for fodder for those curious (since most of what i read on the diff comes from self-described bloggers):

I will use the terms “journal” and “blog” to refer to two different things. I might call a journal a “diary” at some point, but I still mean journal, and journal as something separate from a blog. Also, I hate the term blog, just so you know.

Traditionally (ie, before there were blogs) the only sort of regularly-updated personal website out there was the journal. The journal was a personal account of the writer’s life, generally very personal, generally refering to daily/weekly events (though not always). Each entry tended to be long, a “page” or so, and it tended to have at least some amount of thought put into it.

When the blog first came on the scene, it was a daily pile of links, generally with a bit of commentary. The links were generally to interesting news bits — articles, photos, whatever — and one blog would generally link to something that was seen on another blog, either another news item or the actual blog entry linking to the interesting thing. You could stumble into a pile of interconnected web sites and just keep going around in circles, stumbling on the same links over and over again.

Soon enough, some of these “bloggers” started writing more and more interesting commentary, writing more and linking less. Other “bloggers,” liking what they saw, would link to that interesting piece of commentary, and all of a sudden, what were traditionally (I use that term incredibly liberally) linkers were actually becoming the content providers themselves. The format remained the same, however — generally a long page of content, listed by date, and mostly shorter, bite-sized pieces of content — the web given the MTV treatment.

Soon, the content became the primary focus and the links slipped away, though the feel is still distinct from the journal, in my mind. The journal has been, and always will be, a personal account of the journaler’s life. The blog can be written personally as well, and from a very personal point-of-view, but it will definitely be written about a particular item of public consciousness (even if that population that is actively interested in a particular story is very small).

Which isn’t to say that, these days, there isn’t an incredible amount of overlap. There is, and the two are almost interchangable. But only almost. Even the format makes a huge difference. The journal is still primarily listed as a page-at-a-time construct. Each day, or each entry, is a complete thought, a complete slice of life, constructed by the writer to stand alone. The blog still tends to be a-piece-in-a-whole, with each entry, regardless of length, presented within the context of the other entries posted that day, week, or month (though I do realize that the “permalinks” to most blog entries link to one particular blog entry, rather than a whole group).

For me, the desire to do a blog comes from wanting to write more globally. To write about the world, rather than my world. To be able to dash off thoguhts and let the world comment on my ideas. Comments are also much more of a blogging thing. The journal may have comments, but it is more of a one-way communication, from journaler to reader. Blogs are much more community-centric. “I write for you, and you write back” kind of feeling.

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I feel like journalers write for themselves, with the audience as a byproduct (even if the journaler is writing with the clear understanding that there is an audience), and the blogger writes for the audience, with the understanding that there is a real person writing an entry.

A dear friend of mine is currently teaching in the Congo and her most recent update has left me in shock. I share it to provide the rawness of life there.

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For a while, I’ve been meaning to sit down and write an email about the women I work with here during the afternoons. And then one of my students died today. She had just arrived last week, sent down from one of the villages because she had been so severely raped that she needed surgery. She was so slight and frail, obviously HIV positive. She had walked to the hospital in the evening, just as lyn and I were leaving, and we gave her a blanket and a luna bar to last until morning. In class she was very bright, wrote well, but so quiet and hung out in bed the rest of the day. She hadn’t been able to sit in class the last few days and, when I came to say hi today, I found out that she died last night. Its left me shaky and sad but also looking, with new eyes, at the other women and what this little-hospital-that-could is doing for them.

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What does the term ‘beta’ mean in social software? It’s become an ongoing joke since Friendster is *still* in beta. From my, admittedly limited, experience in software dev, alpha releases were almost always internal, hugely buggy releases. Betas were distributed to a small, reliable group of people meant to give constructive feedback. Of course things are buggy in alpha/beta, but rarely is any software project ever truly complete. Bugs are always found and new versions are released.

The weird thing about social software is that systems are distributed publicly as beta. Thousands (if not millions) of users appear on beta systems. Most of them are not trying to give feedback, but they do push the social and technological limits of the technology. Lessons are to be learned. Of course, lessons are to be learned in software ALWAYS, regardless of the labels.

I find it quite disconcerting that people want to label their distributions “beta” for over a year because it hasn’t been perfected, because new versions are coming out. This, to me, seems like an abuse of the term beta. New versions always come out. Is beta simply an excuse?

What does beta mean in the context of social software? Should we forgive technological imperfections? What about social consequences? What about apparent design decisions that seem to persist?

[This message is in part in response to this rant on why we should be lenient on Orkut because of its alpha status.]

I am really uncomfortable with public distributions of software being labeled as beta (or alpha), particularly when the population joining it is not aware of it being truly an alpha/beta. For example, would it be OK to completely scrap the data inputted because it is an alpha/beta? Are structures really going to change that much when it is in the hands of the public?

Genevieve Bell is one of my favorite researchers. Today, she spoke at Stanford and you can listen to her talk.

In June of 2002, Malaysian newsstands carried the latest issue of “Mobile Stuff” — a magazine geared toward Malaysia” growing population of mobile phone subscribers. On the cover, two young Malay men in clothing that suggests more LA hood and less KL suburbs, hold out their mobile phones to the camera beneath the banner headline “Real Men Use SMS.” Six months later, billboards in Shanghai carried the image of a woman’s shapely calves and ankles, bound with black patent leather ankle straps; positioned beneath one strap is her mobile phone. Beyond their utility as a technology of information exchange, mobile phones it appears have inserted themselves into the cultural fabric of societies across the world. Using comparative cases from Asia, this talk explores how mobile phones, and their various accoutrements, have become key symbolic markers of identities. I argue that mobile phones, rather than facilitating an idealized universal communication, actually contribute to the re-inscription of local particularity and cultural difference as dimensions of a larger political economy of value. Making sense of the different ways that cell phones are articulating with daily life provides an important perspective on the ways in which cultural patterns affect technology use.