Business and Blogging

Blogging Platforms Part 2 - Sorting Out the Terminology

by Des Walsh on March 7th, 2007

Just like any other more or less specialised area of human activity, blogging has its own terminology, its own vocabulary if you will. Take “blogging” for instance, not a word in common use for a large proportion of the human population and a word which I find can easily produce either a blank stare or a querying look on the face of some otherwise well-read person who has been unlucky enough to ask me what I do.

The “insider speak” of the blogging world (the “blogosphere”!) creates a potential barrier for business people wanting to work out how blogging might be of use to their business. It can also be a challenge once they start blogging.

When I wrote my 7 Step Business Blog e-book, a manual for non-technical business people wanting to get started with blogging, I began with an aim that proved beyond my capacity to fulfil, namely to keep the e-book free of blogging jargon. Instead I sought to make it as jargon-free as possible and to provide explanations of jargon terms wherever I could not avoid using them.

It was an interesting experience to find that there were a number of terms I was in the habit of using freely and had thought I understood but which I had to research in order to provide a practical explanation in the e-book. Take for example one of the words used frequently in the blogging world, “ping”: from this Wikipedia entry I discovered an illuminating explanation of the term, in sufficiently non-technical language to be put in a footnote in my e-book. Having watched more than a reasonable number of World War II movies featuring submarines, the explanation made much more sense to me than, for example, the briefer and less historically nuanced one in the The Giant Blogging Terms Glossary. A helpful giant but rather sparing in its explanations, I must say: nevertheless, that glossary and the Wikipedia entry List of blogging terms are both good reference documents for anyone wanting to get on with blogging and not be too baffled or distracted by the jargon.

At the same time, there are words or terms which are commonly used about blogging, and which - if the glossaries cited in the previous paragraph are an indication - are not thought to need an explanation, such as “blogging platform”. It is my impression too that there are a few terms which are used fairly indiscriminately to describe “the thing the blog is built on or runs on”: the terms include “software”, “solution”, “client”, “engine”, “service”. When I hear or read the word “platform” I think of a platform a speaker speaks from, a platform you wait on for a train, a political platform, and so on. If I think at the same time of an “engine” it might be the engine of the train coming into the station at Platform 1, the engine of a rocket to be launched from a platform… I don’t think of “platform” and “engine” as synonymous. So is Typepad, for example, a blogging platform or a blogging engine, or for that matter a blogging service or a blogging solution? I believe so.

Fortunately, to begin blogging and be successful in blogging it is not necessary to resolve these semantic issues about blogging “platforms”, although I do think it would be helpful for non-technical people if there were to be some more clarity about the connotations of words. If anyone reading this has a really good set of definitions of these and other “meta” terms about blogging, I hope you will share by way of a linked comment.

In spite of the potential for confusion about the meaning and connotations of “blogging platform” and because I’ve already named this series, I am going to use the term “blogging platform” as the generic term to mean what I would describe in a highly untechnical way as  “the software or service or online tools you use to create and maintain your blog”.  And under that umbrella I propose to use terms such as “blogging software”, “blogging solution”, “blogging engine” and “blogging service” with some attention to their semantic differences.

That said, here is the classification I have used for types of blogging platforms.

• fully hosted blog - examples Typepad, WordPress.com, BlogHarbor
• blog software download with web hosting you arrange - examples MovableType, WordPress.org
• fully hosted, complex social software - Blogtronix, iUpload
• complex social software standalone, using separate web hosting you arrange - Drupal , ExpressionEngine

For that classification, as with everything in this series I welcome clarifications and suggestions for improved definitions, distinctions and taxonomy - or should that be “blogonomy”, or would that mean the economy of the blogosphere? “blogxonomy”, anyone? :)

One type of platform does not suit all. Different types of users have different needs. In the next post in this series, I will look at the different user types, from the individual with a personal blog to the large enterprise blog or set of blogs, with multiple users.

Share This

Related Stories

• Blogging Platforms - Part 4 - Expanding the Mindmap
• Blogging Platforms - Part 1
• Blogging Platforms - Part 6 - Support
• What Business Blog Platform Do You Use?
• Blogging Platforms – Part 5: User Types

POSTED IN: Blogging Platforms, General, Resources, Social Media