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blogging types
This page discusses types of blogs.
It covers -
filters
Much of the more arid academic debate about blogging has
concerned definitions, in particular efforts to characterise
blogs as a particular genre with distinct structures.
Early observers of blogging suggested that there are two
basic styles of blog: the 'filter' and the 'journal'.
Both usually have a reverse chronological structure, with
the most recent content at the top of the page and the
oldest at the bottom (or accessible through an 'archive'
link).
Most
early blogs were link-driven, pointing to other sites
on a daily or weekly basis. The pointers were annotated
to varying degrees: some were embedded in mini-essays;
others with a commentary that did not extend much beyond
'look at this'.
Some were written with considerable verve. Others were
marked by a self-consciously in-your-face or no-holds-barred
tone - what an otherwise indulgent Wired article
on Mr Winer characterised as "mouth off first, loudly,
and often". Chris Anderson proclaimed in Blogging
Heroes: Interviews With 30 of the World's Top Bloggers
(New York: Wiley 2008) edited by Michael Banks that "Blogs
are wildly imperfect, and therein lies their beauty, because
they are wildly authentic". Authenticity, it appears,
is all ... although presumably easily mimicked through
wild imperfection
As a mechanism for selecting, evaluating and aggregating
information across the web - 'filtering' or 'pre-surfing'
- the significance of such blogs is largely dependent
on the expertise (or entertainment value) of the authors.
Like traditional abstracting services they can be a superb
way of identifying information that might be overlooked
and placing it in context or looking under the hood. They
also provide an opportunity for rolling updates of resources
such as Charles Bailey's online
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.
The downside is that much filtering is self-referential:
bloggers pointing to other blogs or to information that's
neither fresh nor assessed.
journals
Rebecca Blood suggests
that the "post-Blogger explosion" resulted in
the emergence of the online short-form journal, ranging
from terse aphorisms to lengthy meditations about poisoning
pigeons in the park or deconstruction of The Sopranos.
The automated uploading and management of text through
services such as Blogger
meant that authors were able to "instantaneously
update the page at their whim or impulse", with one
promoter suggesting that
in
a blog you can focus on a single topic, writing your
thoughts on a daily basis, or write the daily occurrences
of your life if you want. Some people also use blogs
as a way of discussing their thoughts on many different
topics.
In
practice, since updating a blog is as easy as sending
email, some groups
in Japan, North America and Europe update several times
a day. New York Times reporter David Carr compared
a blog to
a
large yellow Labrador: friendly, fun, not all that bright,
but constantly demanding your attention.
Demographic information about blogging is problematical.
Overall there appears to be a shift towards the youth
market, from over 25's and thirty-somethings to teens
(particularly female teens). Blogger claims to have around
250,000 'members'. Most LiveJournal users are apparently
female and aged 15 to 21.
There have been suggestions that the revolution was short-lived,
fading once authors found that they didn't have much to
say, that their writing hadn't secured a major global/sectoral
readership or that their peers were similarly disillusioned.
Nothing like the online equivalent of a slide night with
a boring accountant ... although fans of boring images
can turn to the various webcam sites for a display of
"surveillant narcissism".
Teeth ezine's Ben Brown sniffed that
Sorry,
buddy - you're just a dork who can't come up with anything
more than a paragraph or two to say every day. You're
not a designer, you're not a writer, and you're not
an editor!
Perhaps
he'd been reading the journal on Slashdot that
featured
wow.
I was walking to school yesterday, and I found this
big fat tube just lying on the ground. I picked it up,
and it spent the day in my locker. I took it home. It's
cool.
or
the Australian blog that reports
i
had a really long shower before, it was so nice. my
shoulders were all red afterwards because the water
was so hot. i love that feeling u get after you get
out of a hot shower. *sleeps*
i wonder who reads this........*ponders*
Zeldman's
A List Apart groaned
"not another weblog", a
genre
of personal site which requires no effort to design
or maintain and whose numbers, maybe for that very reason,
are multiplying faster than rabbits on spanish fly.
It's a genre of site which frequently creates no value
whatsoever, yet demands to be taken seriously.
Some characteristic responses are here
and there is now an AntiBloggies
competition, whose organiser sniffs
One
of the things I don't like is the blog where someone
says something like, 'Today I had a cheese sandwich.'
That's the kind of thing you see in most of these blogs.
You know, fascinating. I don't give a flying ... whatever
what you ate. Don't tell me you have a flat tire. And
if this is how boring their writing is, I can't imagine
how boring they must be to talk to in general.
The
Washington Times mocked blogger narcissism in
2007, announcing that
Our
blogs are posted on carbon-neutral Web servers, using
certified organic computer personnel and biodegradable
pixels. That means when you link to our blogs, you're
actually helping to fight global warming. We know that
makes you feel good about yourself — and isn't
that what's really important?
John
Hiler of Microcontent News fretted
that
my
problem isn't with blogs written by dumb people. My
problem is with blogs written by smart
people, when they have egos like a runaway train. Hmm,
even that's a bit reductionist. I have a sneaking suspicion
that it's not entirely a coincidence that blogs and
ego so often go together. In other words, it's not my
fault ... my blog made me do it! (this is my version
of the "Twinkie Defense").
There seems to be something about the blog format itself
that seems to encourage an almost cancerous growth of
our egos.
Hiler's
subsequent Blogosphere: the emerging Media Ecosystem
article
was more positive, claiming that
Just
log onto the web and you're in the Blogosphere. Geography
has become irrelevant.
... you don't have to be European to participate. The
Blogosphere is increasingly global, and as more and
more countries come online it will become even more
so. Even language barriers are starting to come down,
due to tools like Google's Translator. ...
the Blogosphere is free - both for bloggers and for
readers. For less than a price of a cup of coffee, you
can take part in the global conversation with some of
the smartest and most informed people on the planet.
What are you waiting for?
Trevor
Butterworth said in 2006
If
the pornography of opinion doesn't leave you longing
for an eroticism of fact, the vast wasteland of verbiage
produced by the relentless nature of blogging is the
single greatest impediment to its seriousness as a medium
Sarah
Allen asked
whether blogging is the vanity press of the internet,
albeit more respectable because it is inexpensive and
easy. "If your uncle's dog has a website, why not
you?"
Uber-blogger Jason Calacanis - via a media conference,
no less - announced that he had quit blogging, claiming
that
I'm
looking for something more acoustic, something more
authentic and something more private. Blogging is simply
too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that
drew me to it.
The "a-list" pressure, the TechMeme leaderboard
debates, and constant accusations of link-baiting are
now too much of a distraction. ... Today the blogosphere
is so charged, so polarized, and so filled with haters
hating that it's simply not worth it. I'd rather watch
from the sidelines and be involved in a smaller, more
personal, conversation.
There
is an upbeat defence
in Weblogging: Another kind of website by Chris
Ashley in Berkeley Computing & Communications.
Although blogging won't cure cancer or remove warts it
will, apparently, teach introspection.
Blog guru Rebecca Blood exulted
that
I
noticed two side effects I had not expected. First,
I discovered my own interests. I thought I knew what
I was interested in, but after linking stories for a
few months I could see that I was much more interested
in science, archaeology, and issues of injustice than
I had realized. More importantly, I began to value more
highly my own point of view. In composing my link text
every day I carefully considered my own opinions and
ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique
and important. This profound experience may be most
purely realized in the blog-style weblog ...
The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever
is on his mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts
and opinions. Blogging every day, he will become a more
confident writer. A community of 100 or 20 or 3 people
may spring up around the public record of his thoughts.
Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more confidence
in his view of the world
Literary
scholar Alexandre Enkerli asked whether blogging was a
new genre of "impulse writing". Viviane Serfaty's
The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online
Diaries and Blogs (New York: Rodopi 2004) offers
a literary analysis
The
literal function of a screen is precisely to conceal
and as a result of this perception, all kinds of highly
controversial discourses are freely displayed on the
Net. The screen seemingly offers a protection against
the gaze of others, enably each diary writer to disclose
intimate thoughts and deeds, thus attempting to achieve
transparency and braking the taboo of opacity regulating
social relationships ...
Without the prohibition of intimate disclosure, there
would be no transgression. The prohibition therefore
is constitutive of the meaning of self-revelation on
the Internet.
Tom Munnecke, in questioning our scepticism about much
blogging, commented
that
Blogs
are an opportunity for people to tell their own story.
People can write what they want without intruding on
other people's attention. This taps a deeply rooted
"intrinsic" need, and this is what will cause
blogs to "cascade."
We
suggest that gaining 'readership' is just as important
an intrinsic need: if you're not going to be read, why
publish? Gadfly Geert Lovink identified a 'nihilist impulse'
in blogging, arguing that blogs should "not be reduced
to news" and that
instead,
the mass drift to write online diaries should be seen
as a defence mechanism to zero-out mainstream media
and create a space for contemplation and confession.
The
July 2006 Pew Internet & American Life Project
report
claimed that most US bloggers
are
focused on describing their personal experiences to
a relatively small audience of readers and that only
a small proportion focus their coverage on politics,
media, government, or technology
with
76% indicating that they blog to document "personal
experiences and share them with others" and 37% reporting
that the primary topic of their blog is "my life
and experiences".
Blog guru Robert Scoble characterised a blog as the "single
voice of a person", going on to complain
in 2007 that the 'Techmeme Top
100 List' heralded "the death of blogging"
-
Most
of the things on the list are now done by teams of journalists
- that isn't blogging anymore in my book.
tumblelogs
Tumblelogs or micro-blogs
are discussed in more detail at the end of this profile.
They have been characterised as "to weblogs what
text messages are to email" and have been lauded
as 'stream of consciousness' blogging.
language
Researchers for the Oxford English Dictionary claimed
in 2007 that "the 15 most frequently used words in
the blogosphere" (presumably the Anglo part of the
blogosphere) are -
blogger
blog
stupid
me
myself
my
oh
yeah
ok
post
stuff
lovely
update
nice
[four letter word beginning with s]
The final page of this
profile offers a brief explanation of some blog jargon.
next page (tools
and primers)
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