I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what blogging in other media might be like. I’m starting to realize that it probably depends heavily on what I mean by “blogging.” I’m going to attempt to make sense of my thoughts in a series of posts investigating particular blog genres, and how they might translate into richer media.

Blogs started out, as far as I can tell, as lists of interesting links, like the “hot links” that used to be de rigueur on “My Home Page” along with an animated “Under Construction” GIF. A lot of blogs are still like this, though these days there is more emphasis on adding some witty or insightful commentary. Boing Boing would be the premiere example of this kind of blog. Fleshbot is another example of such a blog serving a particular niche. These “hotlink” blogs are similar to recommendation engines in that they help people to find interesting things in a sea of content. But they’re also like TV channels in that they give this content a brand, a package that frames the content in a particular way.

This suggests an interesting possible way to navigate the sea of content available through (for instance) digital cable or satellite radio. I’m channel surfing, and I come across something I like: a quirky documentary, a shocking home video clip, even a cool ad. I rewind to it (TiVo-style) and press a “Blog It” button. This activates a camera/mic which records 10 seconds of me saying what I like about it. I finish, and my commentary plus pointers to the blogged content (URLs) is uploaded to my blog. The result might look something like BrowseTV.

Now, when I watch TV, I don’t usually go to a particular channel or look for a particular show, but simply surf my blogroll. The hotlink blogs are microchannels, tailored for my niche tastes. The best part is that I didn’t have to send off all the details of my private life to some company so they could crunch the numbers to figure out what I like: I just found the blogs of like-minded individuals, who like what I like, and let them choose my content (and maybe I choose theirs as well).

Of course, there is no need to stop at just content selection and packaging. What about remixing and remaking? Maybe that gets us into the next blog genre…