Blogs can be classified according to subject matter - politics, fashion, history, law, or by device such as moblog and its publishers' status - business and corporate blogs. (Wikipedia, 2007) However, author and media analyst Margaret Simmons (Funnell, 2008) provides a more detailed and complicated classification of blogs - the Political blog, Digest blog, Advocacy blog, Popular Mechanics blog, Exhibition blog, Gatewatcher blog, the Diary, the Advertisement, and the News blog. Despite the many types of classifications, I opine that blogs are not easy to classify as bloggers blog about a wide range of things and there is a very fine line between classification of blogs.
Blogging communities
Blogs are often situated within a blog community of similar interests. ( Wei, 2004)
White ( 2006 ) states that there are 3 forms of blog based communites which is the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Topic Centric Community and the Boundaried Communities.
Figure 1 : Blog based communities
Source : White, 2006
We will look into detail the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community which often pervades in personal blogs which are often visited by teenagers today.
Figure 2 : Single blog/Blogger Centric Community
Source : White, 2006
The blog belongs to one blogger or organization, but it may have several authors, which we will refer to as 'A-list' bloggers. This community is built up by the blogger himself, and also his readers which frequently visits and drop comments not only getting to know the blogger, but also the community of commentors. Identity issues afloats here where the central identity is the blogger, however commentors' identities emerge over time.
One of the blogger centric community example is cheeserland.com
Figure 3 : Print screen of cheeserland.com
Source : http://cheeserland.com
The blogger goes by the name of Ringo, Cheesie and many more. However, she only has one identity where she shows her face in all her photos. Cheeserland.com was founded in 2004 as a personal blog with majority of postings are about the personal life of herself. (Cheeserland.com, 2004)
Figure 4 : Comment box of cheeserland.com
Source : http://cheeserland.com
A community is built through comments, as seen in Figure 4, where the blogger and its commentors interact.
Figure 5: Shoutbox of cheeserland.com
Source : http://cheeserland.com
The blogger and its commentors can also interact through the shoutbox as shown in figure 5.
References
- Cheeserland.com, 2004, Cheeserland.com, viewed 15th June 2009, <>
- Funnell, A 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, viewed 15th June 2009, <>
- Wei, C 2004, Formation of Norms in a blog community, viewed 15th June 2009, <>
- White, N 2006, Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community?, viewed 15th June 2009, <>
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