ReachCustomersOnline.com

Updates to this article are noted at the bottom of this page.

What are weblogs?

The recent Eldred v. Ashcroft decision by the U.S. Supreme Court sent Mickey Mouse back to the Disney plantation for another twenty years. Readers interested in copyright law read about the case online and offline in traditional news outlets like the New York Times.

Knowledgeable readers, however, also read the weblog of Lawrence Lessig, the attorney and Stanford Law School professor who argued before the Supreme Court that Mickey Mouse should be a free mouse after seventy five years. Lessig’s weblog provided his daily thought processes and questions as the case progressed. His posts were neatly organized by date and category.

Until Lessig’s weblog, the internal monologue of a lawyer involved in a key legal battle stayed hidden. Or their ideas were edited by journalists and editors concerned about word count and their assessment of news value. With Eldred, readers got an unprecedented ringside seat to watch part of a key legal battle unfold.

In addition, a few readers posted comments to Lessig’s posts and engaged him in a dialogue. Journalists and other lawyers might have had this opportunity as they waited in courtroom hallways or a nearby bar after hours. However, Lessig’s weblog made the experience accessible to anyone with a web browser and internet connection. You did not have to buy Lessig a drink. You only had to show up and listen.

Weblogs have become popular lately, touted as soapboxes for the famous (mostly journalists and a few technology stars) and the little people who want to write about their kids or pets or other passions. Some businesses have hired writers to write weblogs for their companies. Weblogs have also kept stories alive until the media noticed, for example, the Trent Lott remarks December 2002 that led to his resignation as Senate Majority Leader.

A perfect storm of free and low cost weblog tools, mature functionality, ease of use, and events like the Trent Lott affair have made weblogs popular and on the verge of mainstream acceptance. Another sign weblogs have arrived is a small backlash among journalists who note weblogs do not adhere to the sourcing and accuracy requirements used by traditional news media. (Webloggers point out that many professional editors and journalists are sloppy, too.)

Lessig’s weblog, however, demonstrates the real power and potential for this technology. His weblog is not a soapbox. He could not win his legal arguments through his posts. Instead, he posted his thoughts and ideas about the Eldred case as they happened. And he allowed others the ability to question his thinking.

Imagine if President Bush (and his Democratic rivals), Tiger Woods, the editorial staff of the New York Times, and others kept weblogs, free of their press handlers and speechwriters. Some would be obsessive, writing every day, maybe several times a day, while others would write once a week or so when they had story to tell or a question to share. Some would invite reader comments, others would not. The result would be a more informed and engaged community. It would be CSPAN reproduced exponentially.

Are weblogs useful to business?

In 1999 the Cluetrain Manifesto got immediate attention in the internet and business worlds because it said the internet would destroy business as usual. Cluetrain stated that the old way of doing business, the low intensity guerilla warfare between businesses and customers for a share of the customer’s wallet, would be replaced by transparency brought on by internet tools. Instead of tired (and boring) marketing hype, businesses would use the internet to engage customers in a real life dialogue about customer needs and products.

The problem with manifestos is that their best bits are co-opted. That leaves the rest of the manifesto an empty husk, a cenotaph, a memorial to a body that has lived (and maybe died) elsewhere. The Cluetrain manifesto was right about the ability for the internet to change the way business worked with customers. To date, however, it has been wrong about when and how that would happen.

Weblog technology, however, has the potential to realize some of the Cluetrain ideals.

Visit 100 business websites today and you quickly see they all have similar pages, content, language, and even controlled designs. Not much has changed since 1999.

A business could break out of the strait jacket of its brochure website with a weblog maintained by a community within the company. Authors would write about issues of interest to them, their customers, their business, and their industry. However, posts would have to be free of editing other than practical concerns, for example, exposing the company to legal liability or tipping off competitors.

That still leaves huge areas to comment on. A weblog maintained by senior managers, scientists, marketers, sales, and support staff could provide valuable insight into the ideas and trends within a business and their industry to the benefit of customers and investors. That, in turn, could help customers understand how a company fits into their needs. If a customer disagreed with a post, they could either comment on the weblog (if activated) or by email to the author. Today this expansive, ongoing dialogue is virtually impossible.

If you have read this far, and you have business experience, you doubt this could happen. Not in this world, at least. Press people, for example, would tell their CEOs never to post. Same rule would apply for every knowledgeable person in the business.

Companies have vast amounts of knowledge and experience. Some of that information can be shared (safely) with outsiders. Some information cannot be shared at all. To date, businesses have assumed that all of their company knowledge and experience is not to be shared directly with customers. Instead, a small percentage of information is rewritten by the marketing, press, sales, and other teams and pushed out in standard forms.

Weblogs challenge this approach. While it is possible to imagine company employees would find it useful to post information on a regular basis, sort of an asymmetrical chat over days and weeks, the company would have to rethink how it handles its internal knowledge and experience.

It is also possible that a business would have an internal weblog for staff and a subset of that weblog available (in unedited form) for external consumption by customers, journalists, partners, and others. Weblogs could be a useful method for staff to engage in thoughtful, long term conversations about the business in a way that makes it easy to contribute and record.

If a business uses a weblog, the line between what can be shared and what cannot be shared must be clear. And what can be shared has to be shared in unedited form to work. Otherwise the weblog will read like all the About Us pages on every business website on the internet.

The cultural issues, in other words, limit business use of weblogs more than the technology.

I also would mention that weblogs have one (so far secret) consequence: Google scans weblog sites far more often than traditional websites. This website is Googled 2-3 times a week. The reason is that weblog entries are better indicators of context to a search engine than a link in a traditional web page. In a weblog, a link is often introduced and explained.

What weblog tools exist?

There are many weblog tools, some of them quite good. And you will see more in the next few years as weblogs become mainstream. You will also see lots of hype and false promises.

Therefore, the best place to start is with the older tools that have strong communities that support their tools: Blogger, Radio Userland, MoveableType, Greymatter, and pMachine. There are many others, of course. I have found one useful comparison tool that could lead you to other tools to evaluate (see below). You also might want to look at Drupal, a combination weblog, content management, and forum tool. pMachine has the same capabilities but started life primarily as a weblog tool.

I have tested Blogger (early versions), Greymatter, Radio, MoveableType, pMachine, and Drupal. (I have also tested almost three dozen content management tools over the years, plus numerous Wikis, another type of web publishing tool.) Here are the criteria I would look for:

• Is the installation process through web pages or with a text editor or both? Look through support forums for the tool to gauge the types of problem users encounter. Be sure to download the software and look at the installation instructions: the best tools have considerable documentation about installation and upgrades. A great FAQ is worth gold.
• Are there tools that will convert data from your tool to another tool? This will allow you to migrate to better tools over time. While I have not seen converters into or out of Radio or Blogger (perhaps I have not looked hard enough), I have seen and used converters for Greymatter, MoveableType, and pMachine. You can find converters on most weblog tool sites.
• Where will you host your weblog? The best tools work with most webhosting services because they use common technology like Perl, PHP, and MySQL (or flat file databases like Berkeley). Check with your hosting support team before you waste time installing a weblog tool. Radio and Blogger also provide hosted solutions, some of them free.
• Can your weblog tool output your weblog entries in a format that can be read by other weblogs and news sources? This might appear to be a small point but syndication of your content can be a useful way to market your content beyond your website.
• How are navigation links and page design handled? Some weblog tools manage navigation links while others require you to maintain them manually. Some weblog tools allow you to maintain the page design with a web browser while others make you use editor tools.
• Be sure to consider version control, the ability to roll back content to an earlier version, and the ability to segregate content by audience, for example, an internal audience and an external audience.
• Finally, does your weblog tool include plug-ins for additional functionality? The main weblog application is often built with the core functionality needed by most users. Plug-ins allow smaller groups of users to get functionality they need without slowing down development of the core weblog application.

Remember that a website is more than a weblog. Often you have pages that change little over time, for example, About Us and Contact Us pages. Your website also might have types of content that do not fit easily into the weblog model, for example, photo galleries or newsgroups/forums. Be sure to evaluate all the types of content your website will include now and in the future. Then figure out how you plan to handle the content.

Ideally, you want all your web functionality to be managed in a single database, for example, to make it easy for readers to log in once and use different functionality like posting comments to your weblog and posting entries to your newsgroup. Otherwise, you will face a software integration problem, fun for some coders, not so fun for business types and customers.

One final point. Most weblog tools to date are open source rather than proprietary software. This is the reason that they have evolved so quickly. Open source has made it easy for a rabid community of webloggers to build the tools they want over time. Use of open source also has meant that weblog tools are free or have free versions. The Userland Radio weblog is the only proprietary weblog I have seen and Dave Winer, their founder, is adamant about adhering to open standards. Weblog tools have also benefited from operating under the radar of Microsoft. No single company has dominated weblog tool development and insisted on standards that benefit only their interests.

How do I install a weblog tool?

Because there are a number of excellent weblog tools (Blogger, Radio, MoveableType, pMachine, Greymatter, Drupal) it is tough to document (and duplicate) installation instructions here. However, I can comment on my experiences with these tools and similar tools. I can also point you to an interesting new tool in beta, TextPattern.

Weblog tools divide into two general categories: hosted and non-hosted. Blogger, for example, has no install process because you go to their website and build your weblog. With Radio, you download the software and it works both locally and remotely behind the scenes as you create and maintain content.
Non-hosted weblog tools typically require you to download files, configure one or two of them, then upload those files to your webserver. While these require extra steps, you often get more functionality and control over your weblog content. Furthermore, the configuration often involves the same data:

• Database name for your weblog
• Username for the database
• Password for the database
• File path to the weblog

To get the database information, you will need to either create a database or ask your webhosting support team to do it for you. I find creating databases very easy with tools like phpMyAdmin which most webhosting vendors offer. I won’t kid you. There is a small learning curve. But the webhosting support teams I’ve worked with have made it easy to learn. Your support team can also get you the file path to your weblog.

I can say, from experience, that the main tools (Blogger, Radio, MoveableType, Greymatter, pMachine, and Drupal) are relatively easy to install. They all have strong support online, usually through forums. I got accurate easy to use responses within minutes and hours. I also found their installation process to be well documented and easy to follow.

Of course, if you are a business with an IT group, installation is a minor point.
If it helps, here are my experiences with these tools:

• Radio Userland. My personal favorite. It is so cool to email posts and have them appear on the weblog. And the Userland developers, led by Dave Winer, are very aggressive about open standards and making sure Radio does the latest and greatest. I had small usability problems with Radio navigation links but found Radio easy to set up and use. On the down side, I have yet to use Radio for my private journal or this site because it can only run a single weblog. For example, Radio does not allow you to set up member pages or share member login data between the weblog and newsgroup. I also don’t know that it allows you to publish forward (having a weblog post appear at some future date/time you set so, for example, you can go on vacation and still have posts appear). Bottomline, awesome weblog tool. If you want to add it into other website technology, though, you have to do the integration work. Radio includes a server and does not appear to be configurable at the code level by the user. (I could be wrong.) If you like Radio and use Windows, try SocialDynamX which puts Radio on steroids.
• MoveableType. A close second to Radio. MT allows you to create many weblogs, not just one, and to maintain the presentation code (stylesheets, HTML) through web pages. You can also maintain a list of email addresses to send email that alerts readers to new posts. The core MT developers, Mena and Ben Trott, have built lots of state of the art capabilities, for example, trackback that lets you include who links to your posts. You can configure your weblog(s) through a web browser once you have the software up. MT is very easy to install but you do have to crack open files (unlike Radio) and set a few configuration variables. The documentation, however, is first rate. So is online support. The only problem I’ve ever had with MT was moving from server to server: I did not think to export all my entries and, naturally, the new server had an earlier version of the default database MT uses (Berkeley). But their online support, and my hosting service, got me through the problem quickly. The only negative for MT is that you cannot create single entry weblogs with user-defined names so that, for example, you could maintain an About Us page using MT. This would make MT able to manage a full public website, not just a weblog. MT also started to collect plug-ins into a single location, making them more available. MT is written in Perl and uses Berkeley and MySQL (at least) for databases.
• pMachine. I’m as fond of pMachine as I am of Radio but for different reasons. pM lets me drop in tags (that call PHP functions) that add lots of functionality, for example, making pages viewable by members only. Of course, I’m able to create my own functions (tags) and drop them in, too. pM includes the ability to segregate members by at least 6 membership levels (so you could have pages that can be viewed only by 6 different groups, if you wanted to go crazy). You can also publish forward and have your posts appear at a future date/time you set. (I use this feature all the time.) While pM does not maintain navigation links dynamically, you can easily create pages that do not use querystrings (e.g., a workshops page is workshops.php not page.php?art=111). You can also create single entry weblogs for pages that do not change much. So you can use pM to manage About Us and similar pages. You can also eliminate the need for FTP by using the pM file browser to modify pages. Finally, the install is almost all through web pages. The downside to pM is that the newsgroup is primitive (it’s due to be upgraded in 2003), you have to create new pages manually (copy and paste existing pages which, oddly, you cannot do through the pM File Browser, but this will change in 2003), and it helps to know a little PHP to get the most from the tags. But it is a very addictive piece of software. pMachine uses PHP and MySQL. You can also use client software to post entries.
• Greymatter. This weblog tool started as a personal project by Noah Grey, hence the name. It has now evolved into a strong support community that maintains the software. I found it to be very powerful, and somewhat similar, to MoveableType, although MT has progressed farther in terms of functionality. I was attracted to Greymatter by the use of great quotes that appear throughout the weblog authoring screens. It’s a nice touch. Greymatter uses Perl.
• Blogger. I set up a Blogger site awhile ago and quickly moved to Greymatter only because Blogger seemed too basic for my tastes. If you want to set up a basic (free) site with little hassle, Blogger is a great tool. And much improved. The only negative I’ve heard has to do with downtime due to their cash flow problems. Those problems have been solved with their purchase by Google. As a hosted service, Blogger is not available to be configured by the user at the code level.
• Drupal. I found Drupal by accident through iaslash.org. While I find the iaslash site design tough to read, I immediately noticed their heavy use of taxonomies. Clicking on a category shows a page with all stories posted for that category. Drupal turns out to include a newsgroup (sort of primitive, like pMachine) and a decent CMS. The installation requires cracking open a file but my install went very well. Page links are maintained dynamically. URLs use querystrings heavily (e.g., node.php?art=111) which I find annoying. The admin screen has an amazing array of capabilities, for example, the ability to create user groups and assign capabilities (e.g., read, write, delete) to those groups and then assign members to their groups. The only negative that I encountered is the ability to create and maintain templates, a minor point. I have not used their support forum yet. Drupal is written in PHP and uses MySQL (at least) as a database.
• TextPattern. Since you can never have enough weblog tools (and I have missed a few, believe me, like combo wikis and weblogs), I would also point you to a neat weblog tool called TextPattern. It is in beta which means it may blow up. But the TextPattern screen grabs show this tool has solved one of the key problems with posting on weblogs: how to post without requiring knowledge of html. MoveableType and pMachine, for example, allow you to use html-like shorthand. So does TextPattern. But TextPattern has tabs to let you switch between text, html, and preview modes. You can also publish to sections of a site, not just to your weblog. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

Bottomline, my experience is that software choice depends alot on the person and group who do the choosing. For example, some do rigorous requirements analysis while others do little. Some need lots of functionality while others need the basics. Fortunately, there are a lot of weblog tools available.

Be sure to see updates at the bottom of this page for additional weblog tools and links to helpful articles published after this article.

What are good weblog resources?

Weblog Tools
Here are resources mentioned in this article:
Blogger http://www.blogger.com
Drupal http://www.drupal.org
Greymatter http://www.noahgrey.com/greysoft/
MoveableType http://www.moveabletype.org
TypePad (hosted Moveabletype) http://www.typepad.com
pMachine http://www.pmachine.com
Radio http://radio.userland.com
SocialDynamX http://www.socialdynamx.com (Radio on steroids)
BlogComp: Blog Comparison Tool http://www.urldir.com/bt/ (offline 4/2003)
TextPattern http://www.textpattern.com

More Resources

And here are some links about the history of weblogs as well as links to additional resources about weblogs and weblog tools:

The History of Weblogs (Dave Winer)
http://www.userland.com/theHistoryOfWeblogs
Weblogs: A history and perspective (Rebecca Blood) http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
Weblog Links http://www.keithstanger.com/weblogs.html
Weblogs.com http://www.weblogs.com
Lawrence Lessig’s Weblog http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/
Cluetrain Manifesto http://www.cluetrain.com

Latest Updates

Here are new resources that cropped up after this article was written: (most recent first)

Four weblog software tools (untested by me as of 11/2003): Bloxsom (Perl), Nucleus (PHP), Public Address, and Scoop.

Emerging Alternatives: Blogworld (Columbia Journalism Review)
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/blog-welch.asp

Business Blogging and Why It Can Work
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001437.shtml#001437
Corporate Strategy and Business Weblogs
http://www.jimcarroll.com/weblog/archives/000440.html

TypePad (hosted Moveabletype) http://www.typepad.com
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000272.html
Beyond The Blog: How-To Use MoveableType as a mini-CMS http://a.wholelottanothing.org/features.blah/entry/007162

Blog transcripts by Heath Row of June 9-10, 2003 ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo http://www.vincemease.com/blog/archives/000016.html

Why Blogs Haven’t Stormed the Business World http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/21389.html
Blogging k-logging http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000168.html
Blogging Goes Corporatehttp://www.newsfactor.com/perl/printer/20975/
Head-to-Head Comparison Between rssSearch and Feedster http://www.ctdata.com/weblogs/2003/03/20/0727200.shtml