Recently I’ve begun looking at blogs that bend the rules or definition of blogging–or, perhaps they are websites which I consider blogs. I like to define a blog as something where multiple people can share and discuss ideas or information. So far, the blogs we have looked at have more or less shared their information through text, words, written language. Many of the blogs also include photos and video but these haven’t been their primary focus. I think that this constrains what we generally thing of as blogs.
Image from: yay!everday.com
Statistics have shown that language itself is a very small part of human communication–it’s just a fact. Body language and intonation make up the majority of information exchange between people. Why then should the majority of the traditional definition of blogs focus on the written language when clearly humans are prone to expressing themselves in ways other than words? Websites like yay!everyday and Tracks on a Map allow users to participate in the sharing of information and ideas in ways which we may not think blogs do.
Yay!everday is purely a photo site; the only text on the site is in the links and whatever appears in the photos. However, yay!everday allows users to participate in the exchange of images–the best submitted are posted to the website. It may be cliche but I think the phrase “pictures are worth a thousand words” is true here. The photographs, like text, allow for views to interpret meanings just as they would text. The blog has archives like a traditional blog as well. The only thing that yay!everyday doesn’t have is the ability for participants to comment on picture posts, yet we’ve seen how not all blogs allow posted comments.
Tracks on a Map takes music (that isn’t mainstream) and projects it on a Google map according to where the music was uploaded from (and often where it’s recorded), the music is then accessible to users for listening in a streaming media player. Tracks on a Map allows users to listen to lesser know music being produced on a smaller scale and allowing other publics to access it. An interesting feature of Tracks on a Map is that, again, despite the ability to comment, users are able to automatically send the track they are listening to either to Twitter or Facebook. Is this so much different from a fashion or art blog where people can see what’s new and popular in the world of music around them?
I think that as we discuss blog rhetoric it’s important to keep in mind the ways in which people share what they know, feel, and discover. There are a plethora of ways in which we can do this and a simple archived, tagged, and textual blog isn’t the only way.
