The Communities of today

Blogging communities is a collective community of several blogs derived from individuals that are interconnected and socially networked through linkbacks (reftbacks, pingbacks, trackbacks), blogrolls and backlinks. 

 To create a blogging community, firstly it is to drive traffic to the blog which is to build reader community by linking other blogs to the blog. Then, commenting on other blogs to let bloggers out there know of your existance. Reply comments and market your blog in directories, companies and in social life. By doing so, slowly but promisingly a community will be growing.

A prominant community that can be taken for example is Peta http://www.peta.org/, here is a community fighting for the rights of animals throughout the world. The structure of this community is done by uniting  the public  by blogs and links  to gain information, support and engage in fighting for animal rights in their homes. Peta's page uses user friendly interface, easy to read words, and warm colors to give a certain impact towards their community. They also included engaging tools eg poles, votes, banners, and slide shows of articles, pictures, and events of the past, present and future. 

Peta has been a long standing organization since 1980 and has influence globally ever since. Their interaction process are through dedicated blogs, emails, campaigns lead by prominent and powerful individuals or groups. Peta's slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment." PETA's community serves to educated, give information and abolish animal abuse towards the public and their scalability and life cycle is ever growing and as long as there is animal lover's or people with heart, PETA is here to stay.

n  References

1. The knowledge tree 2006, blogs and community- launching a new paradigm for new community, Viewed 29th September 2010, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community
2. Peta 2009, Viewed 29th September 2010, http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/p/about-us.aspx
3. E-how,  how to build a blogging community, Viewed 29th September 2010, http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html

What are they?

There is so many types of blogs out there, but are each of its own kind?

Blogs as we know or think we know has many classifications of it's kind. It is even hard to say whether the   topic, style, format, audience will classify a blog, because sometimes  we need to look at a few angles in order to classify them. According to  Margaret Simon during her interview with the media report (2008) There  are many kinds of blogs around. These are her categorization and my  views of blogs.

Pamphleteering blog- with a single  or a few author's having a point of view or having a stand on a point   on current events, on politics, sometimes broader events such as a  politic blog.

Advocacy blog- This characteristic is almost like pamphleteering blog but the distinction of it is usually by a vested interest  group, either an advocacy group, a commercial organization, or sometimes  a political party that is arguing or having a point of view like the alternative media blogs such as the Lim Kit Siang blog: http://blog.limkitsiang.com

Digest blog- These blogs also sometimes a directory blog  summarise or collect materials from other other media.Sometimes these  blogs include a little commentary, but most of the time, they're just  collecting material on a single  topics so that you can actually click on the links and go elsewhere for  example of blogs http://pbd.blogspot.com, http://pbd.blogspot.com, http://www.prosphotos.com, http://www.prosphotos.com

The popular Mechanics  blog- also a how-to and reviews blog that educates the audiences on  cooking, gardening, cleaning, repairing, etc. Example a famous chef by  the name of Jamie Oliver educating his audiences on how to cook dishes  in the simplest way: http://www.jamieoliver.com,

Gatewatcher blog- also known as a media watchdog blogs that keeps an eye on the online media

The dairy-Very popular among audiences to keep their daily logs, pictures and rambles about their life http://xiaxue.blogspot.com

The advertisement-These blogs mainly broadcast advertisement for sponsors eg: http://www.ibelieveinadv.com

The News blog-An alternative to print media, people are turning  to news blogs for news and The Star newspaper have came out with their  website to host daily news http://thestar.com.my

The exhibition blog- usually by arts, crafts, or people who want to exhibit their work categorize under this heading a famous example http://www.flickr.com, http://lookbook.nu/#more, http://www.stevemccurry.com/main.php

As we speak, more and more organizations are creating different characteristics blog to out-do each other. For example http://www.tumblr.com also known as a tumblelog or Microblogging. it differs from traditional  blog whereby its content is much smaller, in both  actual size and aggregate file size. A tumble log entry could consist of   nothing but a short sentence fragment, or an image or embedded video.

An Example of Tumblr Dashboard.

User's  are allowed to post up text, videos, photo's, quotes, links, audio, chat  from their computers and even on their smart phones! With technology  these days, who knows what we're able to do next?

References

1. Word Press,Types of blogs, Viewed 28th September 2010, http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs
2. SlideShare 2010, 5 Types of blogs,Viewed 28th September 2010, http://www.slideshare.net/rlewis1686/5-types-of-blogs
3. Melissa, S 2010, Different types of blogs, Viewed 28th September 2010, http://myhosting.com/blog/2010/04/types-blogs-2
4. Google, Definitions of Tumblelog on the web, Viewed 29th September 2010, http://www.google.com.my/search?hl=en&biw=1272&bih=580&defl=en&q=define:Tumblelog&sa=X&ei=TFKkTIfpNIb0cf7MiaII&ved=0CBQQkAE
5. The Media Report 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, Viewed 29th September 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Blogging is the way of life

In a recent statement by the Malaysian Information, Communication and Culture Minister  Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim  comfirms that there are two million bloggers in Malaysia. With a population of almost 26 million, that would estimate 7.7 million Malaysians are bloggers.

According to Synovate a global market research company, they have concluded that the youths in Malaysia are active bloggers with the percentage of up to 48%. Most of them spend a portion of their time blogging. 38 per cent spend a portion of their time reading blogs without making any comments while 22% of them both read and make comments on blogs.

“Malaysians in general have embraced blogging and bloggers alike as a way of expressing themselves. A total of 21% of Malaysian youngsters create and update their blogs regularly and this figure is expected to rise,” Synovate Malaysia managing director Steve Murphy added.

These blogs mostly contain their social life events and currently it has become a trend whereby the bloggers are competing for viewer's to gain popularity.Organizations such as NuffNang and Advertlet has come to notice of this whereby they propose to bloggers to put up the company's banners/ advertisement, by doing so the organization will pay a certain amount to the blogger for each viewer that views his/her blog.

In Malaysia and most countries, social blogs prevail for example:

• http://kennysia.com/ (Malaysia)
  
• http://www.kinkybluefairy.net/ (Malaysia)
  
• http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/ ( Singapore)
  
• http://clapbangkiss.xanga.com/ ( Singapore)

Their blog contents contain up to date current affairs, alternative views, social life issues, events and also creating advertisement for sponsors who subsidize products, cash, and event invitations.

Even though Malaysia is in FACT a beautiful country, political issues still shadow's it's citizens over certain information. Therefore these blog  do have alternative update and views towards the current issue which can be of positive or a negative information which varies to different audiences.

This trend is becoming a money making business where earning money, gaining information/ knowledge and being hip just by your fingertips at home.

Reference

1. Julian, H 2010, How many malaysian blogs are there?, Viewed 28th September 2010,http://julianhopkins.net/index.php?/archives/293-How-many-Malaysian-blogs-are-there.html
2. The Star Online 2009, Survey: 45% of Malaysian youth use Internet over other media, Viewed 28th September 2010, http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/4/8/business/3651619&sec=business
3. Sysomos 2010, Inside blog demographics, Viewed 28th September 2010, http://www.sysomos.com/reports/blogg