Book Review - Who Let the Blogs Out? by Biz Stone.
A book on blogging I read these days (yes, my a-book-a-week-project is still going on , but VERY unsuccessfully at the moment): Who Let the Blogs out? by Biz Stone. (ISBN 0-312-33000-6)
The book has had a slightly unflattering review on the Amazon site, but my impression was a different one: I liked it. This is not a very good technical book, in that it does cover some technical aspects of blogging, but after the last page you definitely do not really know How-to (though you are equipped with the necessary links); the prose is not too well written and the book is not a deeply philosophical book, either.
The book is fun to read (and easy to read), though. Perhaps a little bit like Howard Rheingold´s Virtual Communities (though not reaching the quality of this classic) or Katie Hafner´s “Where Wizards Stay Up Late” (though much funnier and “hipper”) it tries to convey a feeling for a special computer-communication sub-culture, in this case the Blogosphere. And in my view it succeeds in that.
Biz Stone is a bit overenthusiastic about blogging (in my view there simply MUST be one or the other drawback, if only the massive amounts of time consumed by blogging), and I was flattered to hear that my personal tidbits here on Hillside Mediatations do indeed contribute to our common consciousness and the well-being of mankind 
, but reading the book you indeed learn a lot about the lore, the history, the background, perhaps even the future of blogging. Biz Stone gossips along, telling gems, interesting hints and gossip alike (So now I know that the term “Meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins (although I still do not know how to pronounce “meme” correctly - dear readers could you please enlighten me on that?); I pondered on interesting ideas like the comparison of ants and pheromones with blogs and links and even read Longfellow´s poem on Paul Revere (who is compared with influential bloggers). There is a nice glossary with blogging-related terms at the end of the book.
You get a feeling for the blogging-world and lots of motivation to keep on caring and improving your own blog. Reading the book was fun!
Rebecca Blood´s Weblog Handbook could be another choice for the interested reader: providing perhaps more technical and detailed facts, but by far not as much fun to read as Biz Stone´s book.
Got a lazy Sunday ahead, not to keen on too-complicated a read and interested in the blogging-universe? Go and get the book, you won´t regret it.
Biz, Stone, Blogs, book, review
I have also read that article about ants and blogging years before. It has a very interesting point.
As for meme, I always read it as “meme” as the “me” in “meta”. But I reckon now it should read as “me” as in “me” the pronoun.
If you noticed, memes are always a list of things about ourselves that we wish to talk about. Hence, me, me, and me. Meme.
I am proud: This review was linked to from Biz Stone´s own blog.