“If you are thinking about starting a blog for yourself, please do. Do not be intimidated or influenced by rules, or those that brandish them. I encourage you to be yourself in presentation and expression. Write as often, as much, about anything you want. It is your space and your freedom to do so.”

I’m not a regular reader here, but I have to say “well done” Chris. You have done an incredible job of utilizing the medium as a profession. (It’s a nice site.) And you’ve taken a wonderfully open minded tack on this issue when it would have been very easy not to considering your position.

Fabulous!

For someone who may not be a competent writer, wouldn’t it be beneficial to have someone there to make sure the blog is a true reflection of the author?

disclaimer: I’m thinking of bringing on a blogging ‘coach’

I’ve often felt that one of the greatest strengths of blogging lies in its malleability.

@Linda – I think one of the wonderful things about blogs is as you say, you don’t need any technical or HTML knowledge

@Slade – It makes you wonder if he has read ANY blogs …
@George – As I said in my dimensions of blogging post, I think there is a spectrum of blogs from “barely a blog” to the full experience. I think comments are a massive part of blogs but I don’t think I am in the majority

@Jacqueline – Yes I agree, conversation is a large part of the appeal for me

@Doug – Perhaps

@Gerald – I’m thinking part of the transformation will be dropping the “blog” name, it doesn’t seem to help rather it confuses

@mcrilf – I have difficulty seeing twitter as blogging though I know a lot of people think of it that way. To me it is more like a delayed IRC

@Steve – On my blog the posts tend to be quite lengthy compared to the average post, I agree the content tends to determine the comments more than the length

@Michael – I guess it is ok for him to spout off, we are all entitled to an opinion, regardless of merit. I just wish he had read more blogs before he voiced it

@Adam – Me too

@Amrit – I imagine his clients probably think the same as us

@Stephen – I recommend people post when they have something to say, I don’t subscribe to the “filler” idea

@raj – It’s important to write like you have someone there listening, how would you change things if it was a real world conversation?

@Jermayn – I think he will notice discussions like this and get hit with the clue stick real soon

This looks like another rant from an old expert who is still struggling with the fact that Blogs are not just a live journal but a good business way of selling things, both big and small.

And maybe therein lies the reason many blogs don’t have conversations. They display articles passing themselves off as blog posts but don’t really stir up any questions. They tell, not ask.

I’m only starting, but I have to say that I think of my posts as articles – they are normally long and I think them through and make sure everything is accurate before pressing that Publish button.

But I suffer for it – I know one of the ‘rules’ of successful blogging is that you should blog often, but I don’t have much time, so my articles come out about a week apart!

I think maybe I need to loosen up a bit, but I just can’t seem to post if I haven’t tripled checked everything… Maybe this is a hangup of my previous jobs when I was writing things on behalf of the company.

A blog is simply a tool to express. You can talk about the extra-terrestrial science, you can talk about existentialism, you can talk about your cat or you can talk about business. Nielson doesn’t like blogging because he is scared of it. Blogging exposes, in most cases, your true side. A blog post is an extension of your personal side. It is an interaction, a conversation, and conversation happens both ways. Conventional writers shrug conversation because then people can directly question their “authority”. I hope Nielson’s client changes his or her consultant fast

I write separate, longer articles but my blog is really a series of short articles written hopefully in a conversational tone to make a point, to be informative, but also to invite comments back.

Anything else you would want to say about it is opinion and/or personal experience. Most of the blog posts on my video blogs don’t fit Mr Nielsen’s ideas about either blog posts or articles, so where does that leave me?

Without the content, a blog post is only a potentiality. It really is whatever you the blogger make it, and not what Mr Nielsen says it is. He is overstepping his bounds, I think, in opining on something about which he has little knowledge and virtually no experience.

With the advent of micro-blogging platforms like Twitter and Jaiku I think blog posts are expanding in their breadth. They’re now anything from in-depth articles and discussions on wheter life exists outside our planet to “I’m having a coffee” tweets.

Since the outset I’ve always thought that a blog is whatever you make it. That will determine your readership and conversation (or lack of).

Here’s something I’ve discovered since starting up last August: I cannot tell whether a lengthy “article” or a quick thought will generate conversation.

Based on “conventional wisdom,” the quickies are supposed to be what blogging is all about. Yet the posts that some would call an “article” have ended up garnering the most ongoing conversation–and then lead to follow up “articles” which continue the conversation.

I believe that what started out as a journaling tool has grown up–and grown into–a much broader communication vehicle. As a result, writers and readers are treating it according to their individual preferences. What we are seeing is web-based communication with niches.

It’s wonderful.

Yeah, I read that post from Jakob too, and I’d agree with you – I don’t think he understands blogs. My guess is that he’s trying to apply his knowledge of usability on websites to “this new blog thing that everyone’s talking about”.

Blogs started out as personal journals, and have moved and mutated to something very different now, and the transformation continues.

Using Wordpress or Typepad does not mean you have a blog.

Wordpress is just a Content Management System (CMS), used by people to create blogs and/or websites. If you set up Wordpress and use it to publish a bunch of articles withouth comments, then you are using it as an easy tool to create a website. You could have done the same thing with Drupal or Joomla, but Wordpress might be an easier way to create a website that only contains articles. You can even remove the post dates from the Wordpress template, then you really have a website (not a blog).

On the other hand, when you use wordpress, with comments, post dates, etc. and you encourage conversation, then you have a blog.

When I started blogging I set up a blog for fun and turned off comments, because I didn’t want to deal with SPAM. However, a friend of mine took a look at the blog and asked how do I leave a comment? That’s when I saw the error of calling it a blog, it was really just a website.

The term “blog” is generally used to describe any website that uses a blogging CMS (wordpress, typepad, etc), but in my opinion that definition is too loose.

I write infrequent, very in depth articles — and I DO refer to them as “articles” — I consider my blogs to be a platform most similar to a newspaper or magazine column.

Nielsen’s statement would be offensive if I didn’t just assume that, as Brian said, he’s obviously clueless.