Home > Inblox > 2004-03-31

This is not a blog

by "Mark Abbott" on Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:41:17 -0500

This weekend, I saw my sister Joanna, who had a number of criticisms about the revised site layout. One of her big complaints was the "Blog" section. Joanna knows a lot more about blogs than I do -- she has a blog of her own at http://www.livejournal.com/users/joanna_abbott/. So she spent a few minutes schooling Rebecca and me.

My little online journal, I realized, is not really a blog. People can't respond to my posts. There are no "social networking" features like on LiveJournal or Friendster. Basically it's missing lots of features that the real blogger sites have. And that's OK with me -- I wanted something minimal. But the name "blog" leads people to expect something different (that is, something more). (Plus I am not exhibitionist enough to maintain a real blog.) So I need to call it something else.

Since it's just a copy of one of my email inboxes (you can post to it by just sending email to that address), I came up with the name "Inblox". It's a stupid name, but I can't help myself. So it stays, until I wuss out and call it something like "Journal".