Blogging Communities

Many have defined ‘blogging community’ in many different terms. One interesting fact is that blogs are not the community; blogs are just the tool which can help you to build community (White 2005). People have a need to connect with others and share their lives (Taricani 2007). Therefore, blogs provide a platform where we can interact with a large number of people who have common interests.

The best way to build a blogging community is to interact with the readers. Interaction is possible through comments, linking, and blogs themselves by doing reader based topics (Rowse 2009). Adding things like chat boxes, poll, quizzes, sharing links and social network links (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc) can also increase interaction and traffic on the blog.

In an article by White (2006), she defined three different types of blogging communities:


1) The Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community - one blog, multiple authors, in the central blogger’s control   e.g. The Knowledge Tree


 2)The Central Connecting Topic Community – linked blogs, common topic, power is distributed e.g. Global Voices


3) The Boundaried Community – hosted on a single platform, denser and faster possible internal connections  e.g. MySpace.com

An example of a Boundaried Community is Taylor's College Malaysia Blog Ring.

It is a community that is based on a single platform which is Xanga. Members of that specific group/blogring are able to interact with each other and start discussion topics. This community is bound by the fact that they are all (supposedly) Taylor’s students. There are many other groups available on xanga, based on different interests. Each individual has their own weblog and they also share things like upload photos, videos, audios, share quotes, link websites, post miniblogs and more. According to White (2006), often there is more emphasis on the social connections and social networking, as evidenced by attention on who is commenting on whose blog.

Source: The Knowledge Tree

*************************************

References

White, N 2005, How Some Folks Have Tried to Describe Community, Full Circle Associates: Nancy White, viewed 20 September 2010, <http://www.fullcirc.com/community/definingcommunity.htm>.  

Taricani, E 2007, ‘Communities of Blogging: Extensions of Our Identities,’ Establishing Identities, vol.9, no.3, viewed 20 September 2010, <http://www.acjournal.org/holdings/vol9/fall/articles/blogging.html>.

Rowse, D 2009, ‘8 Tips for Building Community on Your Blog,’ Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger, 28 February, viewed 20 September 2010, 

< http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/28/8-tips-for-building-community-on-your-blog/>.

White, N 2006, ‘Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?,’ The Knowledge Tree, Edition 11, September 2006, viewed 17 September, 2010, 

< http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>. 

What's your blog?

Typical ways to categorize a blog could be by its subject matter (e.g. personal life, fashion, politics), device (moblog), media type ( e.g. vlog, linklog, tumblelogs), or status of publisher (e.g. business & corporate blogs). But one cannot define a blog by looking at one aspect it since most blogs contain many aspects.

A linklog is obsolete since the introduction of media like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Twitter has revolutionized microblogging. According to Sussman (2009), bloggers use Twitter much more than does the general population. They use it to promote their blogs and others might use Twitter as a blogging platform by itself, updating it every day like The Diary (Simons 2008).

Source: milblogging.com 

One of the key features about Twitter is the ability to link it to different applications to share things like links, pictures, and videos, very much like The Digest Blog. The Digest Blog act primarily as guides and summaries to things you can access elsewhere, either in the mainstream media or on other blogs (Simons 2008).

Something else similar to The Digest Blog is Storify. Storify uses APIs to pull in real-time data from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other social networks and services, and allows bloggers or anyone else to filter by keyword and then simply drag and drop the content from those services into a story template (Ingram 2010). Basically, you tell stories with other people’s point of view.

In my opinion, this will soon be a new tool that will again revolutionize the blogosphere and might even bring about a totally new classification of blog.

*******************************************************

Refrences

Simons, M 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, Australian Policy Online, viewed 10 September 2010, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>.

Sussman, M 2009, Day 5: Twitter, Global Impact and the Future Of Blogging - SOTB 2009, Technorati, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/>.   

Ingram, M 2010, Storify Wants to Pull Stories From the Stream, New Emerging Technology News and Trends: GigaOM Tech News, viewed 30 September 2010, <http://gigaom.com/2010/09/29/storify-wants-to-pull-stories-from-the-stream/>. 

In the Blogosphere....

A blogosphere is basically made up of all blogs and their interconnections. These interconnections include online services such as Twitter and YouTube. By 2007, Technorati has tracked over 70 million weblogs with about 120,000 new weblogs being created around the world every day (Sifry 2007).

The graph below shows the number of blog as tracked by Technorati from March of 2003 to March of 2007.

Image source: www.sifry.com

So what are all these people blogging about?

Apparently, based on a survey by Technorati (Sussman 2009), the top five topics that bloggers blog about are :
- Technology 
- Politics 
- Business 
- News 
- Personal Musings. 


And based on the survey, only a small percentage of them were from the Asia Pacific (APAC), which is 10%.

Image source: Technorati

In 2007, Gaman compiled a list of the Top 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia. Of those top 50, 


- 28% of them wrote about personal stuff 
- 16% wrote about politics and technology respectively 


 This is just a rough estimate of what goes on in the blogs of Malaysian but it is an insight nonetheless.

Blogs are gaining more and more ground as a serious source of information. A prime example was during the Iranian elections. Iran banned journalists from moving around the country and blocked Facebook, Twitter, and many other popular websites (Hughes & Kellman 2009). As a result, many turned to blogs as a source of news on the topic.

In Malaysia, blogs have a significant ability to dodge censorship. The government control that is imposed on most journalists and newspaper has caused most to doubt the reliability of the mainstream media in Malaysia (Travis 2008). Therefore, most look to online and foreign news sources, including blogs, to get the full story and even stories that weren’t even reported. Blogs give an opportunity for local journalist to write stories that they normally might not be able to for a newspaper. Also, readers are able to get much wanted local perspectives and discuss on issues that are occurring around Malaysia. 

Blogs have crossed that line from being an insignificant online trend to being a powerful source of information. For that reason, the blogosphere will continue to grow in number and importance, providing a larger ground for bloggers all around the world.

 *******************************************************

References

Sifry, D 2007, ‘The State of the Live Web, April 2007’, www.sifry.com, 5 April, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html>

 Sussman, M 2009, Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging - SOTB 2009, Technorati, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-2-the-what-and-why2/>.

Gaman 2007, ‘50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia’, Sabahan.com, 6 February, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>

Hughes,  D & Kellman, R 2009, Blogging’s Global Impact and the Future of Blogging, Technorati, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/page-2/>.

Travis, H 2008, Censorship drives Malaysians to blogs, Western News, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/censorship_drives_malaysians_to_blogs_20080905442680/>.