Is it easy to create one?

Characteristics

Aren’t they just online diaries?

Characteristics

• Frequently Updated Websites

• Content– Pictures– Video– Text

Characteristics

• Displayed in reverse chronological order

Newest

Oldest

Characteristics

• Readers comments

Characteristics

• Each individual posting- Unique URL

Characteristics• Blogging is ‘the art of linking’

• Blogs help us keep up with the web

• Get context around links

• Blogroll- links to favourite blogs in sidebar

Characteristics• Frequency

• Blogs are immediate

• Publish when blogger has something to say– May not be frequent enough for readers

Feed

• Published as websites and also as feeds

But everyone has these…Embedded in Software

Personality

• Blogs are not objective

• Biased/editorial opinions

• Eventually sense that person’s values and interests– Can’t separate the person

from the blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M Yes M- Papers

http://blog.niallok.com/index.php/2008/04/03/enda-kenny-notorious-cross-dresser/

http://www.nialler9.com/

Voice

• Blog has authors voice

• Typically– Everyday informal voice– Direct informal– Similarity to journalism

• Buying paper for columnists views

Conversations

• Linking between related blogs

• Posting comments

Community

Issues

Selection

• Blogger as recipient of information

• What sources to select

• Typically using RSS to manage info

• Information Management

Publication

• What to present on blog

• How to present content

• Blog Design

• Writing Styles (gendered)

• Self representation– Anonymous/Pseudonym

(30%)

• Identity Management

Networks

• Blogger as networker

• Hypertext social relations– Within a Posting– Blogroll– Comments

• Relationship Management

• Network of links between blogs

Egalitarian?

Whom to read???

Accuracy? Expertise?

Business blogging?

Corporate Blog Types

External Blogs• Sales Blogs• Relationship Blogs• Branding Blogs

Internal Blogs• Knowledge blogs• Collaboration blogs• Culture Blogs

Other Reasons for Corporate Blogging

• Become an expert

• Media Relations

• Recruitment

• Test ideas or products

Corporate: Internal Blogs

• Employee participation

• Free discussion of issues

• Collective intelligence

• Direct communication between various layers of an organization

• A sense of community

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/

http://www.makeuseof.com/

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Power of Blogs

• Inexpensive- Low entry costs• Easy to use software• Way of collecting and organising fresh insights

and opinions– Foster information & knowledge sharing

• Unedited & Unfiltered– May not trust ‘official’

• Quick sharing- spontaneity• Links to other sites