The other day Rex Hammock did a good job of explaining the acceptance of blogging as a communication tool. The best part was how the semantics will shift as a majority start to use blogs for communication. He said that while the words “blog” and “blogging” are here to stay, the term “blogger” will probably fall from our vernacular. The comparison was made to email and the lack of a term for someone who emails. I guess you could say that someone is either online or not and if they are online then it is assumed that they use email; the same soon may be true for blogs.
This is something I had been talking about for a while from a different angle (and I like Rex’s angle alot). Blogging is unique as a tool for communicating with a larger, public audience. If you want to have private communications with a single person or a small group you use the phone. If you have a need for that communication to be asynchronous or to have the ability to reach a larger audience then you use email. If you need that communication to reach an even larger audience that may or may not have been invited to the conversation then you use a blog.
Here are some definitions that I use:
Phone - “A one-to-one / small group, private communication tool”
Email - “An asynchronous one-to-one / medium group, semi-private email”
Blogging - “An asynchronous one-to-group, public communication tool”
