Just Watch Those Blogs Brachiate Through The Web!

Morning Coach J.B. Glossinger’s "word of the day" a couple of weeks ago was "brachiate" (pronounced BRAY-kee-ayt). Brachiate means to progress by swinging from hold to hold by the arms.  Smaller members of the ape family, such as gibbons, get around this way.  Chimps, gorillas, and orangutans are less likely to use this method of travel, due to the heavier weight of their bodies.

That movement of gibbons swinging through the jungle by their arms is a perfect metaphor for the way blogs move around the Web.  Traditional websites are more like the heavier chimps and gorillas – they’re not flexible enough or small enough to swing from site to site, or to move with ease among online conversations the way smaller, constantly renewing, blog posts can.

In the few moments you spend on this blog post, for example, you can easily link to Morning Coach to learn more interesting vocabulary, take advantage of a mini-coaching session on corporate blogging, or learn that the word "pretzel" is related to the Latin "brachiatus", meaning "having branches like arms".

Blogs, by their very nature, are available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting. Inviting readers to post comments and then responding to those comments, encouraging RSS subscriptions to the blog so that individual readers can get back to earlier posts to read more about topics of special interest to the them, and linking readers to other sources of information – these are all ways blogs brachiate nimbly through the world wide web, taking readers along for an extremely exhilarating mental ride.