Ryan has been asking me to explain the differences between blogs and message boards. In my mind, the two are clearly so disparate as to require no explanation; thus, when I tried to think of an answer on the spot, I couldn’t, and became frustrated with myself (and looked like I didn’t have an answer and therefore they aren’t different - which isn’t the case).
I told Ryan I’d write my response in the form of a blog post, because that way I’d be able to give sufficient thought to my answer and word it correctly. Well, as it turns out, I’m lazy, and if I’ve learned anything as a programmer, it’s this: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Especially when someone else has already done it more elegantly than you could.
So, here are some good explanations I found out there on the internets.
Semantic differences between blogs and message boards, from Common Craft:
• A blog post says “Here it is, dig it”
• A message board post says “your turn”• Comment implies “if you want, not required”
• Reply implies “I’m not done until you do.”• A blog is my back yard
• A message board is a park• A blog has readers
• A message board has lurkers• A blog is all about ME
• A message board is all about US• When things go quiet on a blog, the onus is on one person
• When things go quite on a message board, the onus is on everyone
I even found a handy chart at Common Craft. (This URL, by the way, was the #1 Google hit for “differences between blogs and message boards,” and is the one other people seem to be referencing the most when presented with the question.)
Here’s another side-by-side comparison of the features of blogs and message boards, from Mathemagenic.
[F]rom where I sit, the key difference is control. On a message board, anybody can initiate a topic. Only the owner of the blog can open a subject for discussion.
Eric at CollabuTech offers this (and also provides a more complex graphical representation):
The signal-to-noise ratio is so much better on blogs than on message boards. You don’t have to slog through the garbage to find the good. Instead, you are handed a map that gets you their (sic) directly. You don’t have to read everything to find the good stuff.
(Of course, “the good stuff” is a painfully relative term, but you get the idea.)
Charles wants to complicate things with his new blog (which I’m currently working on coding), whose structure will be kind of a hybrid of a traditional blog and a message board. But more on that later. ;)
So, Ryan… does this answer your question? (If anyone has anything else to add… well, you know, that’s what comments are for!)
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13 Responses to "Blogs and Message Boards"
Blogs have lurkers too.
That’s a good point. Sometimes one’ll pop up and leave a comment (or ten) out of the blue.
• A blog is all about ME
• A message board is all about US
Point effectively proven.
Just the other day, I was thinking about how blogs kind of grew out of the old (pre-Internet) hobby BBS’s. Those were message boards, but they were also closely monitored by the SysOps who directed the conversations however they wanted. A lot of the old BBS’s I used to read and post on gave a feeling (to me) similar to the one I get when I read/comment on blogs. I realize that they’re different…but I do think that there are some similar evolutionary threads.
Interesting post.
I remember trying to post some bullshit on this one BBS, one time, back in the late 1990s. The Sysop picked up his phone (analog modem, I guess) and started screaming into the mouthpiece, because he didn’t agree with what I was typing.
Yes, I heard it over the tiny modem external speaker. I don’t know how it happened, because the speaker usually cut out after connection.
It’s the same deal with blogs, I guess.
I mistyped. It was probably around 1990 or so, before college/WWW.
When I used BBS’s, it was the early/mid-90s. When dial-up internet became readily available, it basically killed them off or drove them to the web.
Welcome to the Progressive Women Bloggers webring!
Yup.
[1993 Jul 9] Jeff Moss organizes the first Def Con computer security conference which takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference is meant to be a one-time party to say good-bye to Bulletin Board Systems (now replaced by the Web) but the gathering is so popular it becomes an annual event.
http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/history/
BBS begat discussion boards.
E/N sites begat blogs.
Message boards and blogs I see as seperate branches.
Or that’s the way I see it.
Damn.. the BBS I used to use is still around.
Having nostalgicized, I’ll make my own point about the message board/blog difference.
In some ways, I think of the blogsphere as one gigantic message board, with elements of peer-reviewed academic journals. It’s a giant message board in that the blogsphere is ultimately about the “us.” It’s a peer-reviewed journal because pings count as citations (at least, I generally get more excited over pings than comments), and the more effective blogs thrive on cross-referencing.
Yeah, I was all over BBSes in the early 90s. A friend of mine even got a bunch of phone lines in his basement and started charging money. I’d dial in to Compuserve or to local BBSes at night when my parents were asleep. *sigh* The s/n ratio in the BBS world was ridiculous, and you literally knew everyone there. Those were the days. Y’all’dn’t've had any problem fitting in on the boards I frequented way back when.
I think it’s also helpful to consider how the user interacts with the media. Blogs are (hopefully) higher quality, so it’s more compelling to read them in a more or less linear fashion. I give all the articles in my subscribed feeds at least the cursory skim, because I either know the author or am deeply interested in the subject matter. Message boards, on the other hand, are quite nonlinear, and you have to filter them for the information you need. They’re much less journalistic, as well (in style, of course, not in content).
Wow Garrett, you used “y’all’dn’t've” and “literally”! You are on a roll!
That was a great usage of “y’all’dn’t've.” I gotta give you props for that.