Purpose of blogs

[Mark Hewitt]

To me it just seems like another discussion forum. Can you tell me the fundamental part I'm not getting and why Blogs are a seperate thing?

[Lizard King]

Blogs are personal. Users have full control over their blogs.

[Michael2]

For most people it's a space to post about more personal issues - what they did with their day, etc. Some may use it as a place to post articles, news stories, etc. It's not vastly different but it can have a purpose.

[Jim Ellis]

Call me old-fashioned (look at my age if you had any question) but I think blogs are stupid. I have no desire to read someone's diary online. I like discussion boards because you don't have to go look at a bunch of blogs to see if the author has posted anything of interest. Forums do it for me.

[FreshFroot_]

blogs are also being used for a means of way for providing information,

eg. hosting companies use them to post up specials or hints/tips etc.. etc.. there are TONS of uses for them, people always find new usage for it.

[Mark Hewitt]

Thing is, I would love to add some extra features to my forums to encourage extra users etc, but blogging just looks like the same as forums, and hence won't add anything extra.. I hope I'm wrong :(

[Wayne Luke]

I would say that the purpose of blogs is what the Administrator decides for them. On many self-help forum sites, users are encouraged to start a journal of their experiences. These threads often get cluttered and have problems so you can't actually follow the user's experience. This is because people congratulate them or offer advice but we most often look at threads in a linear fashion. Unless you read the entire thread, you don't know what is going on. If each user had a blog, then each entry would be a conversation. They could create a new entry for each milestone and people can comment on it. It is easier to follow.

For a car site, you can use the same concept for car rebuilds or user's experiences with their cars and the forums for general discussion of cars. You can apply different concepts. You can use them as a feature for specific people to post articles and content to your site without a lot of overview and control. Some sites will use them to compete with MySpace and other large blogging systems out there, other will use them in other ways.

I look at blogs as an evolution of forums though. Something that allows the user the more control whether it is through posting content or viewing specific fields of content. It may be rough for established communities to move to a blogging model from the comfort of the existing forums. What you need to do is work with your community and see if there is a need and how to implement it.

[David Copeland]

Do Blogs have a better chance of being picked up by the search engines than forums? Or would they be the same in regards to the search engines?

[Wayne Luke]

I would say it is most likely the same.

[Tigratrus]

But you lose the ability for your members to actually *find* things if some info is posted in the Blogs and some in the Forums (most folks will NOT search both areas), not to mention the division of your member's posting time into two separate systems. I've already said my piece on that though, so I'll let the poor equine RIP ;)

James and Susan

[Wayne Luke]

But you lose the ability for your members to actually *find* things if some info is posted in the Blogs and some in the Forums (most folks will NOT search both areas), not to mention the division of your member's posting time into two separate systems. I've already said my piece on that though, so I'll let the poor equine RIP ;)

James and Susan
This would a deficit in the searching routines, not the presentation. I am sure these will be updated in the future. Also since blogs are a little more personal by nature, the Social Networking aspects of vBulletin 3.7 should bring forth features to tie things together better.

[induslady]

Hello all,

This discussions sounds interesting about the purpose of blogs. I am able to take a few pointers from this discussion.

I would also request you all to see this thread started by me
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1430395#post1430395

Appreciate your answers to the questions I have about implementing blogs.

Thank you.

[sharrison]

Call me old-fashioned (look at my age if you had any question) but I think blogs are stupid. I have no desire to read someone's diary online. I like discussion boards because you don't have to go look at a bunch of blogs to see if the author has posted anything of interest. Forums do it for me.

You have old-fart-itus, a bit like me, frankly I could care less about what somebody else did all day, but millions of people are interested in focussing in on one individuals thoughts. I suspect Jesus would have had a hell of a popular blog.

I will say however that the VBLOG implementation is just a bit , well dull, but it's early days. vblogetin and other blogs offer a whole host of more interesting addons which allow the blogger to personalise their "home page", which vblog currently doesn't , when VBLOG starts ratcheting up the flexibility and ability to customise a blog to the users wishes, that's when they come into their own in a way a simple forum post can't compare with.