Syndication and blogs

I’ve tried to avoid self-referential blogging, if only becuase I’m not huge into navel staring. But, I just ran across an interesting blog: Wendyopolis, which is apparently associated with a Canadian magazine. Now, according to google, blogs are defined as:

“A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.

Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently.”

(From the Glossary of Internet Terms)

However, I’d argue that there are several fundamental characteristics of a blog:

1. Date oriented format–“most recent additions featured most prominently.”
2. Informal, or less formal, writing style.
3. Personal voice–a reader can associate a blog with a person or persons.
4. Syndicatability–the author(s) provide RSS or Atom feeds. The feeds may be crippled in some way, but they are available.
5. Permalinks–postings are always available via an unchanging URL.

I can’t really think of any other salient characteristics. But the reason for this post is that Wendyopolis, which looks to be a very interesting weblog, doesn’t have #4. In some ways, that’s the most important feature, because it allows me to pull content of interest to one location, rather than visit sites.

I’ve written about this before, so I won’t beat a dead horse. Suffice it to say that, while Wendyopolis may speak to me right now, the chances of me ever visiting that blog ever again are nil, because of the lack of syndication. Sad, really.