Assignment: 1) After exploring the various blogs, reflect upon and participate in a class discussion around the questions below. 2) Post two of your Haiku's from Bamfield with either a picture you took or one that reflects the theme of your poem for each. Also include two of your best show; don't tell paragraphs. Through precise phrases, descriptive and figurative language, both these types of writing should help you create vivid images in the reader's mind. This will be marked and is due at the end of the day on Thursday, Sept 19th.
Assessments: Invokes a vivid image in the reader's mind; has a clear and powerful sense of voice-the writing reflects and expresses the writer's personality
An introduction to blogging
Blogging, which joins the words web and log, has increased dramatically in the last five years. From a documentation of the strange and bazar, to lifestyles of celebrities, to serious political commentary capable of having a greater impact than main stream, media blogging has never been bigger. However, before we get into the nature of blogging let us define the term. Simply put blogs are:
A web site containing the writer's or group of writer's experiences, observations, opinions, act., and often having images and links to other Web sites (dictionary.com).
Blogs can thus be thought of as a public journal that anyone in the world can visit. Rather than writing in private a blog gives you a platform to communicate to the world. Given this, most blogs receive very little traffic and die out within the first four months. Therefore, it is crucial to both maintain your blog, understand what makes people want to maintain a blog, as well as how you can network to increase the traffic on your site.
To get a sense of the communication style and content of this on-line medium let us begin by looking at some popular blogs. As you are visiting these sites consider:
- What kinds of content or themes can be found on these blogs?
- What specific audiences does each blog try and communicate to?
- What are the elements of this blog that make it interesting?
- Why would this blog be so popular?
The write ups for these blogs was borrowed from an article in the Guardian Newspaper on The World's 50 Most Powerful Blogs.
3. Techcrunch
Techcrunch began in 2005 as a blog about dotcom start-ups in Silicon Valley, but has quickly become one of the most influential news websites across the entire technology industry. Founder Michael Arrington had lived through the internet goldrush as a lawyer and entrepreneur before deciding that writing about new companies was more of an opportunity than starting them himself. His site is now ranked the third-most popular blog in the world by search engine Technorati, spawning a mini-empire of websites and conferences as a result. Business Week named Arrington one of the 25 most influential people on the web, and Techcrunch has even scored interviews with Barack Obama and John McCain.
With a horde of hungry geeks and big money investors online, Techcrunch is the largest of a wave of technology-focused blog publishers to tap into the market - GigaOm, PaidContent and Mashable among them - but often proves more contentious than its rivals, thanks to Arrington's aggressive relationships with traditional media and his conflicts of interest as an investor himself.
Least likely to post 'YouTube? It'll never catch on'
4. Kottke
One of the early wave of blogging pioneers, web designer Jason Kottke started keeping track of interesting things on the internet as far back as 1998. The site took off, boosted partly through close links to popular blog-building website Blogger (he later married one of the founders). And as the phenomenon grew quickly, Kottke became a well-known filter for surfers on the lookout for interesting reading.
Kottke remains one of the purest old-skool bloggers on the block - it's a selection of links to websites and articles rather than a repository for detailed personal opinion - and although it remains fairly esoteric, his favourite topics include film, science, graphic design and sport. He often picks up trends and happenings before friends start forwarding them to your inbox. Kottke's decision to consciously avoid politics could be part of his appeal (he declares himself 'not a fan'), particularly since the blog's voice is literate, sober and inquiring, unlike much of the red-faced ranting found elsewhere online.
A couple of key moments boosted Kottke's fame: first, being threatened with legal action by Sony for breaking news about a TV show, but most notably quitting his web-design job and going solo three years ago. A host of 'micropatrons' and readers donated cash to cover his salary, but these days he gets enough advertising to pay the bills. He continues to plug away at the site as it enters its 10th year.
Least likely to post 'Look at this well wicked vid of a dog on a skateboard'
5. Dooce
One of the best-known personal bloggers (those who provide more of a diary than a soapbox or reporting service), Heather Armstrong has been writing online since 2001. Though there were personal websites that came before hers, certain elements conspired to make Dooce one of the biggest public diaries since Samuel Pepys's (whose diary is itself available, transcribed in blog form, at Pepysdiary.com). Primarily, Armstrong became one of the first high-profile cases of somebody being fired for writing about her job. After describing events that her employer - a dotcom start-up - thought reflected badly on them, Armstrong was sacked. The incident caused such fierce debate that Dooce found itself turned into a verb that is used in popular parlance (often without users realising its evolution): 'dooced - to be fired from one's job as a direct result of one's personal website'.
Behind Dooce stands an army of personal bloggers perhaps not directly influenced by, or even aware of, her work - she represents the hundreds of thousands who decide to share part of their life with strangers.
Armstrong's honesty has added to her popularity, and she has written about work, family life, postnatal depression, motherhood, puppies and her Mormon upbringing with the same candid and engaging voice. Readers feel that they have been brought into her life, and reward her with their loyalty. Since 2005 the advertising revenue on her blog alone has been enough to support her family.
Least likely to post 'I like babies but I couldn't eat a whole one'
8. Icanhascheezburger
Amused by a photo of a smiling cat, idiosyncratically captioned with the query 'I Can Has A Cheezburger?', which he found on the internet while between jobs in early 2007, Eric Nakagawa of Hawaii emailed a copy of it to a friend (known now only as Tofuburger). Then, on a whim, they began a website, first comprising only that one captioned photo but which has since grown into one of the most popular blogs in the world.
Millions of visitors visit Icanhascheezburger.com to see, create, submit and vote on Lolcats (captioned photos of characterful cats in different settings). The 'language' used in the captions, which this blog has helped to spread globally, is known as Lolspeak, aka Kitty Pidgin. In Lolspeak, human becomes 'hooman', Sunday 'bunday', exactly 'xackly' and asthma 'azma'. There is now an effort to develop a LOLCode computer-programming language and another to translate the Bible into Lolspeak.
Least likely to post 'Actually, dogs are much more interesting..."
12. Xu Jinglei
Jinglei is a popular actress (and director of Letter From An Unknown Woman) in China, who in 2005 began a blog ('I got the joy of expressing myself') which within a few months had garnered 11.5m visits and spurred thousands of other Chinese to blog. In 2006 statisticians at Technorati, having previously not factored China into their calculations, realised Jinglei's blog was the most popular in the world. In it she reports on her day-to-day moods, reflections, travels, social life and cats ('Finally the first kitten's been born!!! Just waiting for the second, in the middle of the third one now!!!!!!!! It's midnight, she gave birth to another one!!!!!!'). She blogs in an uncontroversial but quite reflective manner, aiming to show a 'real person' behind the celebrity. Each posting, usually ending with 'I have to be up early' or a promise to report tomorrow on a DVD she is watching, is followed by many hundreds of comments from readers – affirming their love, offering advice, insisting she take care. Last year her blog passed the 1bn clicks mark.
Least likely to post 'Forget the kittens – get a Kalashnikov!!!!!!!'
Blogs by kids
Another interesting feature about blogs is how they vary from the inane (silly, stupid) to the politically powerful. Here is an example of nine-year old school girl from Scotland who didn't like the food in her cafeteria for both nutritional and taste reasons and began blogging about the horrendous food choices at her school. Her blog, Never Seconds quickly went from obscurity to a household name in Britain. Read more about this amazing story here: Girl banned from taking photos of school meals a big hit.
- How might this story tell us something about citizenship in the 21st century?
- How do blogs provide the potential to empower people who normally wouldn't have their voice heard?
- Why do you think this blog took off to the extent that it did?
- What issues were in play that caused it to draw so much media attention in Britain and Scotland?
