Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

I believe we are changing the meaning of the word “blog.” There has been much talk lately about this very subject (for example) lately, although most of that has been centered around using another word to describe the articles and sites themselves. The change that I am talking about is a gradual change in the letter “b” in “blog.”

In the beginning, it was taken from the word “weblog” with blog being constructed by dropping the “we.” I think people thought the word was cool. Now, I'm pretty sure that the “b” in “blog” stands for “business” and that it should probably be a capital “B.” In some ways, that is bad (in my opinion), but it does put the blog squarely in the purview of this column. Or “Blog.”  ;o)

There are also reasons why the businessing of Blogs is good, but we'll get to that at another time. Right now, I want to take a moment to lament the passing of the innocence of the species “blog” with a small “b.” When these cute little weblogs started, they were very personal things, for the most part. Sure the CEO of Whatever, Inc. had a weblog, but I'm pretty sure she didn't write it. She paid somebody in marketing to do it because it was cool.

I read somewhere this morning that there are 175,000 blogs created every day. I'm pretty sure that 174,999 of those are created to write articles about how to make money by Blogging. There may be as many as 20 really unique ideas on that subject, so these get a little repetitive.

I remember, back at the beginning of the weblog, people with “real” Websites made fun of the bloggers. Why would any one care what you had for breakfast? That was a common question, and they may well have been right. Then there was a brief renaissance period where there was a lot of good writing in weblogs. When some quality content showed up, people started to pay attention. Wow, real writing on the Web! How cool!

And then, as if by magical universal consent, millions (literally millions) of people from all over the world discovered one morning that they were experts in how to make money blogging. And all of them began to write posts about those 20 money-making ideas (or there may be as many as 40 or 60 by now) and other millions of people said, “Wow, that looks easy!” and began to do it, too. Blogs like that are incredibly common.

That is not to say that there are not good Blogs on that subject. There are. Some of them are innovative, intelligent, and well written. They are, however, definitely in the minority. All of those other look-alike sites with look-alike experts, however, have increased the noise level to the point where it's gotten pretty hard to find a Blog that is not about how to make money with a Blog.

That has made it hard to find those few remaining weblogs that are about good writing, and interesting content, and whose authors are not in it for the money, one way or the other. They are still out there, and when I find them I bookmark them or subscribe to them so that I get to read them regularly. Good ideas and good writing are one of the major justifications for life on Earth. It gives back some of faith that is so easy to lose in people.

I must make haste to point out that this particular Blog is written with money in mind, all around. There seem to be a lot of people interested in business software that like this sort of thing. And the rest of my blogs do not qualify as the quality weblogs that I'm talking about, either, though there is the occasional good post and the Web-zine that I co-edit does qualify.

Still and all, there are some things in life that are not all about money. I know that all the Blog-Bloggers don't understand that and don't much care. I just wanted to remind the people that write actual quality weblogs that are not about making money that there are still a few fans out here that love what you do, and we hope you keep on writing. What you do is important, and at least one of us would miss you if you were gone.