What is blogging, really?
Absurd as it seems, I think this is worth exploring, even if you’ve been doing it for a while already. We all have our conceptions about it, and you’d be surprised at how many ways there are to look at it. So humor me as I go over some various ways we understand what blogging is. Add your own ideas in the comments.

It’s Writing on a Blog

The fact that the writing takes place on a blog makes it different than other forms of writing. How do you know it’s a blog? Articles, called posts, are listed in reverse chronological order. Each post has its own unique web page address called a Permalink. Posts usually (but not always) allow readers to leave comments. Writing in any other environment which lacks these “bloggy” characteristics is not blogging. Blogging must be done on a blog, or using blog software of some kind. This is the most technical definition of what is blogging, and it’s an obvious one, but it’s not the only one.

It’s Writing Authentically

Separate from the technical definition of writing on a blog, we can also define blogging by trying to identify its spirit. Regardless of any other purpose the writing may have: to inform, to teach, to entertain, to provoke, whatever—authentic writing is held by many as an ideal associated with blogging. There is plenty of authentic writing found in places which are not blogs, but it’s my completely unscientific observation that the majority of authentic writing I have read on the web has been on blogs.

It’s a Dialogue, Not a Monologue

In the days before the Internet, if you wanted dialogue, you met someone face-to-face, or you chatted on the phone (land line), or you corresponded via post or telegram. That was about it. There was nothing else. When you write a blog post, people can leave comments and even reply to each other in the comments, as though it were a miniature forum just for that post (which it is). People can tweet and retweet your post. They can link to it on Facebook, Delicious, and a million other sites. They can have conversations about it in Google Buzz or other social sites. They can write their own blog posts in response to your blog post. In other words, they can talk back to you and they can talk to each other, and they can do this even if you didn’t allow comments on your blog.
And while it’s true that this dialogue and cross-communication can happen around non-blog content, it almost always happens around blog content specifically.

It’s Writing for Others, Not Yourself

Even though early blogs really were, in a sense, “online diaries,” the paradox is that a blog written to satisfy oneself is nearly always worthless to others. A blog written to satisfy others will nearly always satisfy oneself. Funny how that works, no? Blogging may appear to be writing about oneself, but only if doing that is beneficial to others. In other words, there’s a lesson to learned from a blogger’s personal story. The personal is the universal, and the more personal it is, the more universally it applies. Again, it’s a paradox.

It’s Beyond Writing

Blogging is not just writing. It can include images, audio, video, slideshows, ebooks, and all other manner of what we call “embedded media.” Blogging does not even have to include words: a blog post can have only pictures, for example. You could even choose to not have a headline (although I wouldn’t recommend that). Since part of the definition of blogging is technically as a digital publishing platform, the mechanics of publication on the web don’t care about the medium. That part’s up to us. Do it regularly and you got yourself a podcast. Blogging is beyond writing.

It’s Everything

Or at least, it seems like it. Blogging is now what television used to be. It’s what newspapers used to be. It’s what magazines used to be. It’s what books used to be. Granted, right now, all these other media are still in use, and perhaps they always will be within our lifetimes, but don’t you think it’s interesting how almost any form of traditional media has been transmogrified somewhere by someone into the “new thing.” It’s like the entire world is being slowly converted to digital, whether we like it or not. Opportunity exists at the edges of this digitalization.

It’s Nothing

At the end of the day, blogging is still just a tool, a method, a means. It’s a channel, a conduit, a facilitator. Without people, it’s nothing. And people will still be here and still have that primal need for contact even if blogging didn’t exist. Blogging is not a replacement for human relationships. It does not automatically confer a winning mindset or happiness to its practitioners. Its existence means nothing, does nothing. What we do with it? That’s what matters. If I had a choice between taking a storytelling class and a blogging class, I’d take a storytelling class, no question about it.
Over to you. These are not the only ways to describe blogging. What is blogging… to you?