Mike Arrington has opened up a storm of a debate over at TechCrunch, criticising the official Google blog for not allowing comments. He’s picking the issue up from a post by Zoli Erdos. He asks
Is a blog really a blog if there are no reader comments?
It’s an interesting question, but the answer is pretty obvious. Yes, of course it’s still a blog.
As Arrington notes, most definitions of a blog is a regularly updated website with content in reverse-chronological order. I reckon that’s about right.
Comments are nice, but not a requirement. John Naughton’s blog, for example, doesn’t have comments open, but that doesn’t make his site into something other than a blog. It’s not something I would personally do, but on a popular blog, the moderating of comments could turn into a serious business. If Google allowed comments on their blog, they’d probably have to employ someone full time just to deal with them.
And people can still comment on the articles, through their own blogs. Such comments will soon be found through Technorati, or Google’s own blog search.
Technorati Tags: google, blogs, techcrunch, zoli erdos