Blogging

This week we looked at the world of blogging. We were asked to consider if the early predictions about blogging would eventuate, and what we thought 'distributed conversations' and 'distributed communities' meant.

I think the early predictions about the potential of blogging to give everyone who wanted it a voice and a venue to publish have definitely come true. In the past ten years the number of blogs has risen exponentially, so much so that weblogs originally set up to list and categorise available blogs have been abandoned because the task became too extreme. The current rate of new blogs created yearly is in the millions, and sites which track their development, do so in terms of those most visited or linked to, or the frequency of tags posted. Blog readers now rely on RSS feeds to notify them of updates to their favourite blogs, because to check each of the hundreds that some subscribe to would be an impossible task. Also, blogs are rich in variety, ranging from personal musings to news, to community interactions, to name but a few. Also, according to Sobel, more women are blogging and the use of mobile devices has also contributed to the increase.

The terms ‘distributed conversations’ and ‘distributed communities’ refer to the fact that these online blogs, due to their nature, allow conversations to take place over a wide range of participants and time. They are not necessarily localised or take place at the same time.

References:

Rettberg, J., (2008), Blogs, Communities and Networks in Blogging. Polity Press; Cambridge. Accessed 3 July 2011.

Blood, Rebecca. "Weblogs: A History and Perspective", Rebecca's Pocket. 07 September 2000. 26 July 2010. . Accessed 3 July 2011.

Sobel, J. 2010. State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction. Accessed 3 July 2011.