Sunday, June 7, 2009

Classifications of Blogs & Blogging Communities.

Types of Blogs


There are so many different blogs out there so how do we classified which is which? Well, according to Wikipedia (2008), there are 5 types of blogs:

The mobile blog is the latest in trend. According to Paddy Holahan from BBC (2003), he stated that in few years time every phone users will have a website and be using blogs as their version of the world. Each type of different blogs cater to different audiences depending on their needs.

Simons (2008) divided the types of blogs into:
  • Pamphleteering blogs (an individual arguing a point)
  • Digest blogs (summarize the information and add a little point of view)
  • Advocay blogs (promoting a point of view on a particular issue
  • News blogs (provide people news)
  • Advertisement blogs (flogging a product)
  • Gatewatcher blogs (group who looks over the media reporting and criticize)
  • Exhibition blogs (creative works by artists such as photographs)
  • Diary blogs (normal personal journals)
  • Popular mechanics blogs (information on how to do stuff such as surfing)
Overall, the classifications between Wikipedia and Simons are different as the latter's is more redundant while the former is more general. But both classifications has something in common which is the multimodality in their blogs. According to Walsh (2006), multimodality is a document more than just texts but also videos, images and others. This is exactly what a blog normally has - a combination of all which allows bloggers to type, upload pictures and videos.


Blogging Community


Image Source: bloggingcommunity.com

A blogging community is defined as a set of people interact online with people who shared the same interest over time. (White, 2006) From the diagram above, we can see that the centre is the facilitator who is in charged of all the bloggers surrounded him. The bloggers who join the community and is within the diagram can exchange information with another blogger such as 'follow' or 'twitter' their blogs. This could not be done by an 'outsider' who did not join the community.


MyBlogLog




Image Source: mybloglog.com

The image above is one of the profiles from the famous blogging community, MyBlogLog whereby if you are the members, you can add the user to your list and start following them about their recent activities or events that they have posted on their website.


Conclusion

The classification of blogs is useful in helping each user to achieve their own needs and is important for users to post the content which is approriate to their blog type to avoid confusion among the readers. Besides, the blogging community is useful as it allows the bloggers to 'bookmark' each other to exchange information who shared the same community.


Reference:

BBC News, 2005, Blogging Goes Mobile, last viewed at 7th June 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2783951.stm

Simons, M 2008, Creative Economy Online- Towards a Taxonomy of Blogs, last viewed at 7th June 2009, http://www.creative.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=229836

Walsh, M 2006, The ‘textual stuff’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community-Launching a New Paradigm for Online Community?, last viewed at 7th June 2009, http://www.creative.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=229836

Wikipedia 2009, Blogs, last viewed at 7th June 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
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