Deeper Into The World Of Blogging

There are several classifications of blogs that are available for readers. For example, according to Technorati (2008):

• Personal/Lifestyle (eg. Kinky Blue Fairy, a popular Malaysian lifestyle blogger)
• Technology
• Food (eg. KY Speaks)
• Politics
• News
• Music

Firstly, what is a blogging community? An online community, according to Wikipedia (2008), is a group of people that interact and communicate via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email and online social networks rather than face-to-face. Therefore, a blogging community is a group of people that communicate via blogs. Examples of these blogging communities would be communities like Flickr, Nuffnang, Advertlets and Livejournal, among others that communicate through vlogs (video logs) and other various methods.

You might be wondering, how does one create a blogging community? According to Miller (2006), there are five simple steps to doing it. First off, the structure and the design of the community must be simple, easy to use and user-friendly. Second, know, recognize and understand the readers and the members of your online community. Thirdly, don't judge your readers, fourthly, know how to control the members of your community so that things don't go out of hand, and lastly, use free software.

An example of a blogging community is Livejournal. Livejournal is a 'dynamic community of individual and group journals' (Paolillo, Mercure & Wright 2005). Livejournal links its members together according to interests, and allows members to join and create groups that go towards one interest.


References:

Miller, R 2006, Five rules for building a successful online community, Knight Digital Media Centre, viewed 2 November 2008, <http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060831miller/>

Paolillo, J, Mercure, S & Wright, E 2005, 'The Social Semantics of LiveJournal FOAF: Structure and Change from 2004 to 2005', viewed 2 November 2008, http://www.blogninja.com/paolillo-mercure-wright.final.pdf

Technorati 2008, 'The What And Why Of Blogging', viewed 2 November 2008, http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/

Virtual Community 2008, Wikipedia, viewed 2 November 2008, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities>