Types of blogging communities & methods to build blogging communities.

As what I had shared in the previous posts, the main purpose of blogs were to shared thoughts and views on certain issues, and this will led other people to comment on the issue discussed. The people who commented on certain topic of a blog were the blog communities. To be clear, blog community is the one who has relationship with the blogger either as a reader or blogger and they must be sharing the same interest.

There are various ways to build blog community. The basic requirement that need to be fulfilled is to be active and update the blog with new topic frequently instead of publishing once in awhile. Secondly, try to ask some question to increase the interaction between you as a blogger with others (readers/bloggers). Thirdly, try to answer the question by the other bloggers or readers that commented on your post. By asking question and answering them, it gives the feeling to the community that they are having a 2 way communication instead of just read through and comment with no hope for responses.

Fourthly, visit the reader’s blogs and link to them to increase the exposure. And lastly, think of some projects that allow readers to take part. There will be more people to follow your blog if you have more projects for them. These are basically what a blogger must do to increase the readers, but for sure there are other methods like Facebook and Twitter to act as a tool to get readers, so it is all depend on the bloggers on which methods to use.

              (source: http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community)

As proposed by White (2006), there are three types of blogging communities, named the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community. The single blog community can be owned by one owner or organization. This form of blog based community is to emerge readers to begin return to bloggers sites and getting to know the community of commenter. Second, Central Connecting Topic Community arises between blogs linked by a common passion or topic such as food bloggers, automobile bloggers and political bloggers. Lastly, the Boundaried communities are collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform.

One of my favourite blog is the Hemmy.net. It is considered as Single blog centric community because he is the only author for the blog and if he takes down the blog, the community would just disband. Now you get the idea on how to build the blogs community, try it out.


Reference list

White, N, 2007, Blogs and Communities Part1-5, viewed 23 August 2011,

http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community>

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach.

The weblog is known as one of the alternative media besides the mainstream media such as newspaper, television and so on. Basically, the bloggers can blog about everything based on the personal interest or public interest. Meanwhile, categorizing of blogs can be very subjective.

Chettri (2011) divide blog into five categories, personal, corporate, genre, media types and devise. However, I am not agreeing with part of the ideas in categorizing blogs into genre, media types and devise. The reason is simple, why would a blogger just blog about one specific type of media such as photo without posting any other thought on other issues? It just does not make sense because this type of blogs normally would not attract a good traffic.

In my own opinion, blogs are supposed to be categorized based on the main interest of the blogger. For example, it can be personal blog, political blog, automobile blog, entertainment blog, food blog, technology blog and so on. A personal blog, in detail, it is where the blogger share the thoughts and comments on a current issue that he/she is blogging and the remaining are the non-personal blogs. An example of political blogs as shown below:

(Source: http://anwaribrahimblog.com/)

In my further research on the internet, I had found a better way of categorizing the blog. Margaret Simons (Funnell 2008) suggests that the blog is supposed to be categorized into 9 parts, pamphleteering blogs (a blog that published by different authors on current political issues or broader event), digest blog (summarize of materials from mainstream media and also other blogs), advocacy blog (similar to pamphleteering but it is in a group, either an advocacy group or commercial organization), popular mechanics blog (a How-To-Do blog), exhibition blog (vanity publishing), gatewatcher blog (media observer), diary blog (an online diary), advertisement blog and news blog.

Personally, I would think Simons’ way of categorizing is the most appropriate to categorize the blogs because it is more reasonable. What do you think as internet user?

Reference list,

Chettri, S 2011, ‘What is Blogging? What Are The Different Types of Blogs?’ NetChunks, 5 March, viewed 22^nd August 2011, <http://www.netchunks.com/different-types-of-blogs/>.

Funnel, A 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, The Media Report, ABC Radio National, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript)>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community.

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog”. Basically the word “weblog” is a combination of “web” and “log”. It was first used by Jorn Barger in 1997 (Branum 2011). The blog users are increasing year by year with a large amount of increment with an amount of approximately 169millions blogs (Blogpulse 2011). This is mainly because of the technological changes in the last few years with the introduction of smartphones, tablets and netbooks.

The introduction of these new devices allows the bloggers to update their blog instantaneously to the worldwide audiences especially when there is crisis is happening and people are trawl the internet for the latest news and information. According to Technorati (2010), 25% of all bloggers are already engage in mobile blogging and 40% of bloggers who report blogging from their smartphone or tablet say that it has changed the way they blog, encouraging shorter and more spontaneous posts.

Besides, a research by Technorati (2010) shows that 40% of the consumers are agree with the bloggers’ view that said more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs in the next five years than from the traditional media and the consumers also think that the news from the mainstream media is losing its trustworthiness. In other words, people are starting to believe in the news or information from the blogs than the mainstream media such as newspaper, television news and so on.

There are four different types of bloggers which are Hobbyists, Part-Timers, Corporates and Self-Employeds (Technorati 2010). The Hobbyists remain the biggest group follow by Self-Employed, Part-Timer and Corporate bloggers based on a research that carried out by Technorati in 2010.

      (Source: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/page-2/

In Malaysia, there are few different categories of blogs such as personal, technology, humor, entertainment, automobile, food and so on and the top ranked blog in Malaysia is kennysia.com (Sabahan 2007).

Blogs that under the politic category are increasing and it is resulted from the restrictions to freedom of speech. The freedom of speech in Malaysia is being restricted because of the laws such as Sedition Law, Defamation Law, Freedom of Assembly and Law for Licensing of Newspaper were being imposed (Wu 2005). Among the few famous political bloggers are JeffOoi.com, Rocky’s Bru, Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim (Sabahan 2007). 

(Source: http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/)

Reference List

Blogpulse Stats 2011, Blogpulse, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://blogpulse.com/

Branum 2011, The Blogging Phenomenon: An Overview and Theoretical Consideration, The Blogging phenomenon. An Overview and Theoritical Consideration, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm

Gaman, 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

Sobel J, 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010, Technorati, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/

Wu T,H 2005, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: A Malaysian Case Study on Blogging Towards a Democratic Culture, Viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.bileta.ac.uk/Document%20Library/1/Let%20a%20Hundred%20Flowers%20Bloom%20-%20A%20Malaysian%20Case%20Study%20on%20Blogging%20Towards%20a%20Democractic%20Culture.pdf

Purpose of blog

In the 21st century, communication, business, education and so on can be done via internet. There is a huge changes since the world has evolved into a digital age where the people are doing almost anything online via different type of media.

The blog is the best platform to do all the things that mentioned earlier.

(source: http://tutorialnewbie.com/blog/tag/tutorialnewbie-com/)
The purpose of this blog is to educate the readers about the issues that is happening in the media world today. Besides, it also acts as a place to share knowledge and information of the relationship between publication and design with the target audiences which is the mass internet users.