NOTE: This is an blog also published on Blog Rhetoric as part of a semester project along with my peers’ work. I encourage you to check out all of the final products on blogging 3/29/10
By definition a weblog or blog is an online list or archive of information a person or people wish to present. Essentially, blogs share. Blogs share information using text, images, video, audio sources and allow for a public interaction with this information as well. Blogs include links and can be linked to from other sites. Blogs often allow for participation in the form of written or video comments. Blogs create publics and conversations. Blogs rule.
Image from Kristina B
I want to consider blog sites first; platforms that allow an individual to create a blog. There are an abundance of these and they all roughly do the same thing. Tumblr, Squarespace, Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Posterous, and on and on…they all allow users access to easy-to-use blogging technologies. Blog platforms, like most other technologies, have begun to specialize in certain aspects in blogging. One blog might be more user-friendly to someone wanting to use CSS where another blog might have a more beginner-friendly interface for posting. This diversity in options available to bloggers via different types of platforms is certainly a result of a vast difference in what bloggers want. Bloggers are presenting different tastes for what they want out of a platform. But what’s the big deal? Well, it’s just proof that bloggers are all different, they want different things and there are people willing to produce and offer them. It’s a benefit that there isn’t a pseudo-monopolizing blog platform like Myspace and Facebook dominate social networking sites isn’t it?
I’m not going to go over all the aspects of each major blogging platform; I don’t have that kind of time, but it’s good that a person keenly interested in blogging checks each out to see what they offer. Like any sort of brand, each of these platforms carries a certain type of reputation to present to its users. It’s certainly important to notice that there are differences like this in blogging. I mean, sure, there’s going to be the people who just go with what they find first, or what their friends suggest, and they may or may not like it. However, platforms seem to put a lot of time in effort into deciding what they want to allow their users to do. For instance…I can’t post Flash videos on here (WordPress). WordPress won’t allow Flash for security reasons. I’m not all that happy about this because Vimeo–a major video hosting website–puts its videos in Flash format to show and have some really amazing things that I’m just not able to post. The fact that there is that type of specialization on platforms makes it undeniable that the stereotype of the angry teenager or geek or whatever who is blogging their day-to-day life is completely false. There are bloggers looking for specific features when it comes to blogging for various levels of expertise.
Platform Features:
Considering the things a blog allows you to do as a user becomes even more important when you consider how you prefer to post. I mentioned above that WordPress does not allow Flash videos to be embedded, this will effect how I as a user am able to present video that I wish to incorporate into my posts. Posterous has a unique feature which automatically places pictures into scrollable thumbnails which enlarge on click, which is a rather advance feature requiring no user involvement. However, a Poseterous user might have a problem if they don’t want multiple images to appear like this. Ultimately what a platform provides for their user changes how the user can blog, or shapes them to blog in the way that the platform allows.
Usership is also an interesting aspect of blogs. Because of the previously mentioned limits for each platform and their reputation for certain types of blogging experiences, certain types of bloggers may prefer one platform over another, which then creates a unique networked public within that platform. Now, I’m not saying that all or a majority of people who blog from a certain platform adhere to a stereotype, but often blogs do collect bloggers of a similar…feather. Some things that might effect what usership a blog attracts are certainly the features a blog allows.
Image from t. magnum
From this sense of groups of similar users we start to see ways that blogs and blog posts are done similarly. As I mentioned before, blogs essentially are meant to keep a log of what the user shares. So, realistically, what a blog is, doesn’t really matter as long as it is user edited, stored, and shared. Right? Maybe…There are several ways to share information and not everyone will have the same opinion. I tend to think of myself having a very liberal sense of what a blog is exactly. Many bloggers might only consider a blog to be a blog if it contains mostly text with some video, audio, or images. I like to think that the text isn’t all that essential though. Yay!everyday is an example of what I consider a good photo and video blog. Hyperlinking and the ability to comment on posts are also considered some very standard and basic necessities for a blog…meh. I mean, it really depends on what level of interactivity the blogger wants their reader to have. The first blogs described in Say Everything didn’t have reader feedback—though they were link heavy. Feedback didn’t actually appear until the creators of Blogger applied a user interface that allowed for publishing without direct HTML editing.
Image from miss miah
I really want to get to the idea of formal and informal blogging now. So far I’ve mostly described informal or personal blogs. But what about those blogs which contain multiple contributers, belong to organizations, companies, groups, and so on? Editor Matt Bell described in one talk that blogs are a way of keeping information and discussion flowing. Matt talked about this in terms of the literary world and portions of time between books being published, but it applies to all professional blogging in general I think. Recently there has been a huge rush of professional blogs that offer their readers supplementary information. This is specific information that may not be found in a more mainstream setting. Some of my favorite examples of this are the blogs HTMLGIANT and Wooster Collective which assemble very specified sorts of knowledge and ideas that they provide to their readers that isn’t considered mainstream (notice the amount of embedded Vimeo videos there are in Wooster!).
Any questions about blogging myths? Well here’s one of the blogging ledgends. Scott Rosenberg is the author of Say Everything, a history of blogging and its importance.
What do we really use blogs for though? Everything, it seems. Sharing is what blogs do, but they share everything there is to talk about it seems. Anything from news, politics, pop culture, art, and so on, there’s a blog about it. What does this do for the blogger and blog reader? It creates networks of information and entertainment essentially. More specifically, blogs give people a means of sharing and learning that is more specified than what they might get in their everyday life. This is important. People no longer have to rely on mainstream means of learning or go to lengths to find the information or entertainment they seek. This sparks a phenomenon that Doreen Massey discusses in her article A Global Sense of Place called time-space compression. In short, time-space compression is what happens when technologies allow communication and learning, which was previously limited by travel and physical presence, envelops those distances allowing users to experience social and media interaction that spans the globe without having to go too far. Blogging, among other online activities, is drastically effecting how people experience the world.
On way that experiences are changing is how knowledge expertise and knowledge groups seem to be changing. Before the digital and web ages knowledge specialization in knowledge areas was essential and somewhat expected. One person would probably know a lot of what there would be to know about a specific thing. Now that the web and blogs have allowed for such a broad sharing of knowledge though this is disappearing. Expertise in one area is fading and being replaced by broad understandings of many things. The advantages of these changes are debatable, but the point is that blogs are allowing people to share and learn in a way that is greatly changing the world.
