Blogs as conversation and lasting art

After reading some of my students' blog entries about blogs they had read, I was reminded about something intriguing about blogs in general: they're ambiguous status as personal conversation/confessional OR as a lasting statement about life, akin to a novel. Granted, most blogs are of the former kind - gut-spilling for the benefit of a select few (usually real-world friends), but I like the fact that there could be profound writing hidden among these entries, and that they are not explicitly marked as "literature" or "art." It could be one particularly interesting, well-written entry in an otherwise self-indulgent confessional blog - great writing is great writing, and to me, its almost "greater" or perhaps somehow more authentic when its not in a published anthology or in a well-known novel. Its the ambiguous status of personal blogs that keeps the blogosphere interesting to me. For this reason, I hope that people don't just see blogs as a way to refer people to interesting news sites on CNN.