A new way to define "blog"

Everywhere I turn, it seems someone is asking me what the definition of "blog" is. Is it any old website? Is it just chronologically-organized content? Can an organization blog, or is it necessarily individual? If there are no public comments, is it a blog? What if you're using blog technology to do non-bloggy things - is it a blog anyway? Are blogs journalism?

Henry Copeland, the brilliant guy behind BlogAds, has another answer: A blog is a conversation.

Blogs are very much about personal expression. Bloggers have a genetic advantage over traditional publishers. Blogging is in our social DNA, just like conversing, except blog conversations are amplified by the Internet to reach around the globe and entwine with thousands of similar conversations. Basically the blogosphere is a big cocktail party. A blogger may dish out an anecdote about what her son ate for breakfast, an endorsement of a candidate, a curse word or a prayer and a movie review. In that mix are bound to be comments that offend one constituency or another. That's human.

Sounds about right to me.

And given that all politics is personal, every politician should be engaged in the conversation with their constituents, their supporters, their critics, and with the public. Someday, having a blog will be as obvious as having a phone number.