I'm starting to wonder if the blog format is really the best way to present the type of content we, and most other "bloggers," tend to produce. Basically, is displaying content by date, when most of the content is not date-sensitive, the correct format? Maybe it's time to reevaluate that convention.

When you think of the type of content you normally write, is any of it really date sensitive? I mean, as long as you aren't writing a news blog, then what's most important are the ideas and insights, not the date they were published. But in blogs, the hierarchy of data is not based on the value or relevance of those ideas, it's based on which of those ideas is most recent.

Of course, news-centric sites like the Huffington Post and TechCrunch make sense in a blog format, but sites like Signal vs. Noise and Guy Kawasaki's Blog, really do not.

How many great posts with valuable advice and insight are buried at the bottom of both these sites because the blog format says the most recent is the most important?

Say I'm a new reader to either of these sites, I'm most likely going to quickly scan the page and catch a few of the most recent posts to get a feel for the content. But these recent posts may or may not be the kinds of posts that represent the blog as a whole.

If I visit SvN right now I see a cartoon by Sam Brown and some punditry surrounding the iPhone. Decent posts, but I'm completely missing excellent articles like these because they happen to be older.

Have we all bought into using an incorrect format for displaying our content?

Sure, you can always throw up a "Top Posts" widget in the sidebar spotlighting some of the best content. But is that enough? Just take a look at the sidebar on Guy's blog and tell me how illuminating it is.

This is something that has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but even more so recently as we look to refresh and realign our blog. There is no easy answer to this question. We have all become so accustomed to the blog format that it's familiarity and convenience make it hard to question whether it's really the best way to format our content.

However I do keep coming back to the analogy of paper.

Imagine that each piece of paper is a blog article. Now, based on a typical blog hierarchy, the paper would be organized in a stack based on date. You need to flip through the stack, most recent to least recent, in order to access articles. But a valuable article may be hidden at the bottom of the stack because it's older. How is someone supposed to know this?

What needs to happen is that the pile is flattened. The papers are not stacked, but spread; removing the date-based hierarchy and instead, allowing the user/viewer to browse articles based on content, not publish date.

Like I said, translating this idea into a web-based publishing format is easier said then done. But it's definitely something to think about. I know we will be.