Blogging Communities and Classifications

The internet facilitates and furthermore enigmas the shift from local communities, to a global community, hosting within itself many global sub-culture communities. Blogging, like so many other technological innovations, has, and is still continuing to affect our global community in unprecedented ways.

The Blogosphere

The collective community of all blogs is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked. Discussions "in the blogosphere" have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues. A collection of local blogs is sometimes referred to as a bloghood (Wikipedia 2008).

<Image Source> Microsoft's 'tongue in cheek' business cards seem to show some self reflexivity.

There are many ways to classify blogs, one of the simplest being the distinction between a 'Personal Blog' and a 'Corporate Blog'.

Personal Blog: the traditional, most common blog - an ongoing diary or commentary by an individual. Blogs often become more than a way to just communicate; they become a way to reflect on life or works of art. This form of social media lends to an online generation already too busy to keep in touch (Wong, 2008).

Corporate Blogs: for business purposes; used either internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs.

One high profile corporate blog is Google's Official Blog which informs readers of all things new at Google and information such as user's shifting search preferences and strategies, as well as other interesting tit-bits from the internet.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.

A blogging community is formed when a group of people with similar interests, histories, or events come together to share and discuss those similarities. Lin and Sundaram (2006) state that a blogging community is developed by leaving comments or providing links to each others blogs, thus creating a mutual awareness amongst each other. By becoming a part of a blogging community, one is able to increase the number of viewers to their blog, create a single content access point, conglomerate the content and depth of knowledge within a group for readers, and is a great way to pool other individuals with similar interests (Kinkeldei 2007).


References:

Kinkeldei, B. 2007 "Forging Connections and Promoting Growth Through Blog Communities", 21publish.com, viewed 29 October 2008, <http://www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf>.

Lin, Y. Sundaram, H. Chi, Y. Tatemura, J. Tseng, B 2007 "Discovery of Blog Communities based on Mutual Awareness", Arizona State University, viewed 29 October 2008, <http://www.blogpulse.com/www2006-workshop/papers/wwe2006-discovery-lin-final.pdf>.

Wikipedia 2008, "Blog:, viewed 29 October 2008, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog>.

Wong, W 2008, "I'm now reading a story on microblogs", Chicago Tribune, viewed 27 October 2008. <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>.

Image: Gaping Void 2008, "Microsoft: change the world or go home", <http://www.gapingvoid.com/microsoftbizcard219border.jpg>.