Blogging Communities: Methods & Structures

A blogging community basically exists to connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers (Wikipedia 2009). There are also interest-specific blogging platforms such as Blogster that connects a good amount of political bloggers.

This form of new media community is created and sustained through maintaining connections and links with other bloggers. But how do they do it?

Nuffnang, a global blog advertising community which is based in Malaysia keeps its community active through blogger outings. They constantly carry out movie premieres and paintballing activities as social gatherings for their members. This helps keep one connected with others of similar interests, making them easier to relate to and more familiar with others who are in the same ‘group’.

Once a blogger registers in Nuffnang, the 'Nuffnanger' is able to use social networking tools available in Innit, a community-based feature.

Nuffnang's Web 2.0-heavy Innit interface

Bloggers can chat with each other using the chat box on the right, as well keep updated with the latest and most popular blog post updates, as see in the center of the page.

White (2006) shares that in a ‘Boundaried’ community, there is heavy usage of Web 2.0 tools and yet less emphasis on cross-linking because these features are available through another host. In Nuffnang case, those features are made available by blog hosts such as Blogger.

Nuffnang is only responsible for being the middle person between the advertiser and the blogger, as well as connecting all the bloggers who are hosted under them.

Image Source: Boundaried Communities

Blogging communities make for denser and faster internal connections.

Reference List
Nuffnang 2009, What is Nuffnang, viewed November 11 2009, http://www.nuffnang.com.my

White, N. 2006, ‘Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?’, Knowledge Tree, viewed November 11 2009, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Wikipedia 2009, Blog: Community and cataloging, viewed November 11 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#cite_note-13

Classification of blogs

There are many ways of classifying blogs, and this enables readers to easily find a blog that are relevant to what they want to find, and they also know what to expect. Wikipedia (2009) divides classification of blogs into several types, differing in the type of content and also in the way that content is delivered or written. Such as:

a) Personal blogs - the most traditional and common type.

c) By genre, focusing on a particular subject.

d) By media type such as vlog, photoblog and sketchblog.

Author and media analyst Margaret Simons (ABC Radio National 2008) divides blogs into types such as Advocacy blogs (a group or organisation that actively pushes in a fairly informative fashion), Diary (personal blog) and Exhibition (by artists, writers).

As surmised from above, blogs are divided according to topic and style of blogging (which would provide genre type) as well as format (media type). Each particular blog would attract a certain demographic audience, such as young female readers who would flock to a fashion blog.

I find that dividing blogs by genre is the most useful as blogs are created on a particular theme and the blogger would blog relevant materials that are of similar interest to the blog’s demographic. According to Wikipedia (2009), there are travel, fashion, political, and education blogs among others.

However many blogs are not ‘stuck’ on just one classification type. Rather, they are a mixture of many. This does not create confusion; instead, it promotes ‘highly desirable’ interactivity by providing more reading choices to readers (Li 2006, p. 78).

References

ABC Radio National 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, viewed November 10 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Li, X. (eds) 2006, Internet Newspapers: The Making of a Mainstream Medium, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, USA.

Wikipedia 2009, Blog, viewed November 10 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog