I was speaking with a colleague at work last week. We were dicussing blogs and their mix of original writing vs commentary on other writing. She told me about a scrapbook that her father keeps. When he finds an article in the newspaper or in a magazine that interests him, he cuts it out and puts it in a scrapbook. Then, when she visits, he will show her the updates to his scrapbook and they'll talk about some of the articles, why they are interesting, why they matter, etc.
She says the scrapbook is a catalyst for some great conversations. "The scrapbook is really my dad's blog."
Exactly! He just happens to have a more limited (exclusive?) distribution channel than those of us who use Typepad, Blogger or other means to share our writing and our commentary. But at the core of it all, it's really just people talking about stuff that matters to them.
Bonus Link: The code for the Technorati tags at the end of this article were generated by Eric Myers' Tag Generator. He's built a little app that will generate technorati, delicious, flickr or furl tags. Via Micropersuasion.
Photo copyright Smithsonian Institute. Original available.
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