CRA Inc

10 Feb 04 @ 6:47 pm

Blog And Forum … What’s The Diff?

We are often asked by clients looking to forums for on-line information sharing, “Isn’t a blog the same thing as a discussion board?” The answer is “no,” but without lots of exposure to blogs, it can be difficult appreciate those differences at first. How are they different? Tech intellectuals who think deeply about such things have been carrying on this conversation for the past year or so, and the bottom line is that it’s still hard to define (although this blogger gives it a shot).

For us, it’s a question of ease of use and social interaction. Discussion boards tend to be useful for tracking discussions about specific topics in “threads,” reading the back-and-forth responses of readers. It’s more of an “anything goes” medium, and it’s not always easy to find what’s new. Further, it can be difficult for readers build any affinity for the writers of particular messages (affinity which can spur them to return to the site again and again), as their content might be spread across 20 or 30 topics, many of which you might not see.

With blogs, however, the most recent information is always “on top” of the page, and it’s much easier to track the contributions of specific writers as you read through all the posts chronologically. The “scan and read” format of the web page is also easier to use, in our view, than the “click and click and click” format of discussion boards. Finally, you can still invite comment on blog posts through a comments feature (as CommLog has), so the ability to question and discuss is still open, if you choose it.

At the end of the day, the best way to illustrate the difference is probably through exposure. To get a sense of how blogs and discussion boards differ in “feel,” visit these two sites: the Howard Dean Campaign Blog, and the Howard Dean Forums (Discussion Boards). The differences in feel and use should be clearer after a visit to each.

posted in category(s): Points of Interest