All About Blogs

This post is about blogs and is kind of like notes to myself but I thought for those interested in blogs in might be useful.

I am still reading about blogs in their infancy in an interesting book called 'We've got blog' from the editors at Perseus Publishing c2002. I was interested in the concept of 'social currency' introduced in the article titled 'The Internet in not killing off conversation but actively encouraging it' (Rushkoff D. 2000) In this article he states 'Content is just a medium of interaction between people. So one of the purpose of blogs is to 'provide ammunition' in conversation so that people will have something to start conversation about. I think television has filled this role for a considerable time in modern society.

Another important term I have learned from this text is 'blogorrhea' which is introduced in the article 'Been 'Blogging'? Web discourse hits higher level' (Fleishman G. 2001). Fleishman defines blogorrhea as 'a tendency for creativity strapped bloggers to write meaningless prose in an attempt to keep their blog active.'

Another term introduced by Fleishman is 'blogrolling' which he intimates 'is derived from logrolling, a habit of trading favors or praise among artists, critics, or academics.' I guess this would be part of the 'social currency' concept also. Fleishman also hints that this is an important feedback mechanism for all blogs.

This idea about the purpose of a blog is from the article 'In the trenches with a Weblog pioneer : an interview with the force behing Eatonweb, Brigitte F.Eaton' (Rhode J.S. 1999). She states 'Since I started the weblog essentially as a bookmarking tool, things that worth mentioning tend to be things that I'd like to find again, articles, studies, etc.' This is similar to how I am currently trying to use my blog. I have just recently added the bookmarks and links that I think will be of use to me personally. Also this entry may be used as the basis for some of my work at school.

What I like about blogs is the fact that they don't have to be rigourously referenced and are freely opinionated. I also like that with my news. I now prefer social satire of the news to real news on the web because I already know the main news issues and I just want to hear about them in an interesting way which has some personality.

Eaton also describes her blog as 'A place that I can pour out my feelings, irritations, and ego-filled opinions.' She says that 'As far as I can tell, users of weblogs find them very valuable as filter of web information.' I think information professionals (which is what I hope to become) can utilise blogs and wikis for this purpose. Blogs and wikis suit informal, opinionated collaborative efforts and with current UI(user interfaces) have very few barriers to use. Use of folksonomies and other categorization systems makes blogs and wikis even more useful to their end users.

In the article 'The state of the blog part 3: blogger future' (Turnbull G. 2001) Evan Williams suggests one of the purposes of a blog is '... To help readers find more content their interested in, writers find more natural interest for their content, and people to connect with like minded people'. This is a firestarter of an idea and I really think this should be the aim of corporate intranet blogs and wikis and also library blogs and wikis.

Evan Williams also suggests that '... The blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity, and Personality. These are the three characteristics I believe are the driving factors in weblogs' popularity as a publishing format.'
I agree that focusing on frequency, brevity and personality are key to successful blogs but also nowdays with 'infoglut' or 'datasmog' being huge issues the personal filter and selectivity aspects of a blog combined with contextual links (provided by increasingly sophisticated search engines) are the way of the future. That and shiny robot and rockets.

Evan Williams also sees the role of blogs as being 'lightweight content management'. This is an important role, think of how much you rely on friends when you search for information in an area you know they know a lot about. Blogs offer an opportunity to empower and increase the sharing of this informal knowledge base.

My brain is full now... so that is all for now