Are non blog owners also bloggers?

This is a guest post by my lovely wife Yemi’, of MsLuffa
After reading Build a Superstar Blog ebook, my wife and I got into a bit of a discussion.  She’s convinced that even though you don’t own a blog, you’re very much a blogger. It didn’t make much sense to me, mainly because in my head a blogger is someone who owns and manages a blog. But she believes that some readers and visitors take part in the blogging process – reading entries, posting comments, and promoting blogs so much that they are bloggers themselves.

…She writes;
It’s easy to get caught up in a blog bubble and assume that everyone we’re interacting with on our blogs are bloggers. Well, yes and no.

Thinking back to my pre-blogging days when I used to get forwards to blogs, and extracts from blogs sent by email. I was always tempted to visit the actual blog and leave a comment. Notwithstanding, for a long time, I was a phantom visitor. I’d visit the blog, enjoy its goodies, and disappear leaving no trace of myself other than being counted as one of the day’s visitors.
But once I did I was enthralled in what the blog had to offer and felt so very much a part of the blogging process by interacting with other readers that I felt like a bona fide blogger well before I owned my own blog.

This goes to show that you use social networking to promote your blog, but what goes a long way is when others promote you as well – you reach an audience you otherwise wouldn’t have reached.

It took a lot to get me to start blogging. And even though I’ve been doing it for a few months, I’m not a professional blogger, I just happen to write my thoughts online where everyone else can read and respond to them –and if they don’t that’s cool, as long as my thoughts are not bottled up.

Looking at the stats of visitors on my blog, I’ve come to embrace the phantom blogger – as a different breed of blogger. Those who’d pop in and pop out and leave no trace of themselves. Thinking about them helps me realise that the contents of your blog are not static, they just don’t sit on a webpage, and it’s got legs and can go really far, you’ve just got to motivate it to explore the world.

So what do you think? Is my Mrs right? Are non blog owners a different breed or bloggers, or should we just leave them in the readers category waiting to make the transition to blogging.