I've heard the 'blogs are monologues' discussion before, and I am afraid that it doesn't cut ice with me. Firstly, all dialogue could be seen as a series of interleaved monologues. If we have a discussion, someone has to start off the conversation with a monologue. The first blog entry is the equivalent of that. And the comments/trackbacks form the opportunity for people to take part in a discussion by posting their own thoughts and comments thus creating a dialogue. Remember that 'dialogue' is, according to the OED, 'conversation in written form', so if you have two people taking part in a written discussion together, you have conversation. Thus blogs are a conversational medium. You suggest that comments may not be part of a blog, but I think that depends on how you define blog. I think that a blog is defined not by the content but by the tool/format, and that because comments are an integral part of the blog tool/format that they are part of the blog. The blog entry is one thing, the blog as an entity is the entry plus the trackbacks plus the comments plus the links etc. If one hived off the comments into a disussion forum, as some blogs do, I guess one could argue that the comments weren't part of the blog, but I don't think the discussion or, the blog, would become any less conversational. That's because blog conversations are wider reaching than the blog that they originate on. Look at the weblogs.com fiasco, when Dave Winer shut down 3000 weblogs that he was hosting. The discussions (and that's the polite term for it) ranged from blog to blog, both in blog posts and blog comments. Definitely there was more of the to-ing and fro-ing that is indicative of conversation, with people commenting on other people's comments, that you would get if people were just referencing the original post and leaving it at that. Conversation is about interaction on a personal level, and blogs do allow for that. Radio, quite definitely, does not. (The fact that not all blogs attract people who wish to converse does not, in my mind, detract from the fact that the potential is there. Some blogs may be a one-sided conversation, but then, so are many spoken conversations.) The original point I made that blogs are a conversational medium does not, of course, mean that there are no other conversational media, online or otherwise. But blogs are not the same as forums or bulletin boards. Forums/bbs are often 'unowned' or seemingly unowned public places whereas blogs are one person's space which is open to the public to a greater or lesser degree (some blogs are completely private, some open only to trusted friends, some completely open). Blogs are more permanent than chatrooms. So yes, I think blogs do bring something different to social interaction online, they are owned spaces for public/private interactions and expression. I may well go into this more in future.