Nowadays blogging is already a trend or an interest to most of the people, especially teenagers. According to different statistics, we can see that the blog users are increasing continuously. In the LiveJournal.com (blog website) research, the most people that using blogs are ages between 16-27 years old. This trend has sweep to Asia and nearly half of those online in Asia have a blog.
Source: http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml
Is personal blogging is a waste of time? What good do you get out of it anyway?
Blogs are a space for a person to express out everything he or she wants. People publishing their daily thoughts for all to read on their website. What is a blog? At its very basic, blogs or “Web logs” are literally online diaries with articles, writings, photos, web links or other entries made by the blogs’ creators, or “bloggers.” (abcnews.go.com 2005)
I personally feel that blogging is not a waste of time because it can be just an interest or a leisure activity to a person. Blogs also can be a way to communicate with others. Students that study abroad can communicate with their families and friends. Companies can set up blogs to show the products to clients and also allows them to give comments. Blogs have a variety of benefits to different people.
Different types of blogs
Subject Matters:
Political Blogs, Religion Blogs, Fashion Blogs, Food Blogs, Travel Blogs, Entertainment Blogs, Audio Blogs.
Device:
Moblogs (blogs for mobile phones)
Media Type:
Vlog (video blog), Linklog (hyperlink blog), Sketchlog (sketch blog), Tumblelogs (mixed media blog), Phlog (photo blog),
Although there are different genres of blogs, but most of the blogs are basically focus on text and images. Other blogs like vlogs, phlogs etc. are mostly focus on their topic. They have their own theme. Therefore, identifying different genre of blogs can be seen through the style of writing, the theme which the author chose, and the materials that posted.
The blogging community
A blogging community can be formed among a group of people that share the same interest. They will have a strong bond or friendship with each other and giving comments or having discussions in their space. For example the Malaysia Alternative Voices, it is a blog for Malaysians voice out their opinions about the country. It can be consider as a political blog.
Online vs. Print
Most often, blogs contain various forms of multimedia content (digital videos, photos, audio) and postings that rival those found in traditional print (abcnews.go.com 2005).
The difference of online and print will be the style of text. For example, animation, hypertext, audio and videos. These are the things which print-based text does not have. According to Jakob Nielson, people rarely read web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. So, writing in a website must be more concise, simple, and follow the inverted pyramid style. Compare to print, the language use is informal. In print, the length will be longer and it catches the audience by the style of writing.
Reading involves different levels of decoding, responding and comprehending at affective and cognitive levels, critiquing and analysing (Walsh, M 2006, p. 25). Designing a website must be also interactive and interesting to catch the audience attention.
New Styles of Blogs
Audio Blogs
These audio blogs, more commonly known as “podcasts”, is the equivalent of radio “on demand.” Audio Blogs were made because of the popularity of digital audio players such as Apple's iPod has urged the growth of blogs with audio content. Visitors can download or listen to the audio files.
Reference List
abcnews.go.com 2005, What is Blogging?, viewed 27 October 2007,
Microsoft 2006, Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia, viewed 26 October 2007,
Nielsen, J 1997. How Users Read on the Web, viewed 4 June 2007,
Walsh, M 2006, The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual, and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp.24-37.
