Jeff Jarvis the world of online communications, assessing forums (“like Saturday night at the bar”), chat (“frat parties”) and of course, weblogs:
Weblogs are homes in nice neighborhoods. I put my name on my blog; I tend the lawn around it; I don’t want anyone littering my yard. My comments are my open house and I ask that you behave accordingly.
Yup, this is almost exactly right. The one correction I’d make: take out the “nice neighborhoods” part. Some weblogs are homey places in nice neighborhoods.
Others are clearly funky little lofts in some hyperactive urban cityscape somewhere. Quite a few are the kind of houses that are stuffed with books, art, and other academic brick-a-brack — while others are clearly dorm rooms. And of course, here and there you’ll stumble into a neighborhood that, if not exactly bad, certainly makes you wonder whether its really safe to be there at all.
To each, their own, of course. Every blogger builds their own house with language as our only bricks, and a little web design to serve as mortar to hold it all together. (And yes, tons of blog houses are pre-fab affairs of dubious aesthetic value).
PS – This metaphor also leads me to conclude that if bloggers build their virtual homes on the strength of their ideas, then there’s a few online houses I can think of that are likely to collapse any minute now due to shoddy workmanship…