What is a "blog"?

What is a “blog”? A silly question, yes? A blog is a site consisting of posts/articles, right?

Well… no. I’ve found that many people who are not comfortable with blogging or are new to it, tend to confuse the taxonomy, and are interchangeably talking about a “blog” as a site, as well as a “blog” as a post/article within the site. “I’ll do a blog today.” “Your latest blog was great!” “Should we do a blog?”

It’s a bit confusing if you’re used to thinking of a “blog” only as a collection and not as an item, but there’s no point in opposition. Just make sure you know what people mean when they talk about a “blog”, so that there’s no confusion if you need to work together. I guess this illustrates that the bloggers have not been horribly efficient in educating the greater public about the craft and the terms used, or that it just takes more time for the concepts to settle in.

UPDATE: at least part of the confusion is due to myspace. Look at these guys’ blog controls. They use “blog” both as article and collection.