What is a blog?

With snow delaying my departure back to the Canadian prairies by about 2 hours, I used up the time in the airport catching up on some of the talks from Godblogcon2007.

A talk by Paul Spears subtitled The case for Blog Euthanasia was particularly interesting. A year or so ago oodles of people that I knew seemed to be taking up Xanga, but that seems to have largely faded (with many moving to Facebook).

The whole Godblogcon thing has also left me questioning how people define what constitutes a blog. Rotundus predates the blogging craze - it started back in 2001 - but over the past year or two I've gradually come to accept people labeling it a blog. Yet at the same time, I'm not quite sure how well this site fits how Godblogcon's definition of a blog.

This site might be classified as a personal journal - or me just thinking aloud and looking for some feedback. Unlike Godblogcon, I don't really care much about marketing (although I don't mind if people link to the site, as I think that for the most part the discussion here is of reasonable quality). Generally speaking I have a no-ads no-blogrings no-permalinks policy (I don't even link to my own sites - let alone anyone elses').

A month or two ago, I modified that no-permalink policy slightly with a disclaimer/permalink to some stuff from Desiring God at the top right hand of pages. I'm still not totally happy with the wording of though, but for now it will do.

The primary question that Godblogcon left me with was the role of marketing in blogging. Should a blog market itself, and can it ever get lost amidst the marketing? Secondly, what qualifications should a blog meet before it should be promoted?