Blogging software can be used to create a media site. But as I've said many times here, it can be used for many other things. (Note that the Movable Type logo to the right, from their site, calls it a Publishing Platform.)

Since blogging software is based on a database metaphor it can easily be used to sell goods. Comments thus become customer feedback. Your search box becomes a link to the inventory. Any site can be a blog.

But most of those who talk about blogging talk about it as a medium, as a way to do journalism.

In line with that, we're saddened by the news that Billmon, a popular blogger known for his Whiskey Bar, has decided to fold up his tent. And I'm afraid that what he wrote (fortunately it was in a newspaper) as he left the field was both obvious and wrong.

What was obvious was his point that, as blogging grows, it gets harder-and-harder for a new blog to break through and to win an audience.

This is simply the law of numbers at work. It's called First Mover Advantage. Netscape had it, and we know there is no other browser. Yahoo had it and we know there is no other search engine. (Yes, I'm being facetious here.)

First Mover Advantage is not decisive, but it takes more effort to overcome it as a market (even one without a business model) grows. Yet any student of Technorati or Blogstreet knows that there is churn in the rankings.

Where Billmon is wrong is in seeing blogs as journalism.

Oh, they can be. But they can also be much more. Weblogger Brasil , Blogstreet's current number one, is a software company and Web host. Slashdot, which Technorati lists as number one, is a community about open source issues.

Even those sites Billmon notes as basically political in character aren't always blogs in the conventional sense. DailyKos and FreeRepublic are community sites more like Slashdot.

Other sites have proven to be nothing but job try-outs. Kevin Drum of Calpundit got a job at The Washington Monthly. Matt Yglesias now works at The American Prospect. (Feel free to send other examples.) Good for them.

The plain fact is that blogging is moving in several different directions at once. You can use it as a personal platform. You can use it to produce journalism. You can use it to start a community. You can use it for storing photos. You can use it to build a store.

Just use it, and don't try to tie it down with one label. Because no one label fits, any more than you can pin any single label on the term Web site.