What is a blogging community? Owyang (2007) defines blogging community as an online community, it is a group of people with similar goals or interests connect and exchange information using web tools. The aim is to socialize, making friends, and sharing ideas through internet. It is just a community where they have a sense of identity and belonging, and having peers who always follows their blog and agrees to the blogger’s opinions. This community has people from all around the world where they communicate through online.
NikkiS (n.d) said a blogging community is created by reading other blogs where you might get ideas when you have run out of ideas of what to post, and by leaving comments on others blogs are same as leaving your blog URL (Uniform Resource Locater) with your comments this enables people to find you easily. Next step stated by NikkiS (n.d) which is replying your comments, readers feel happy when they get feedback from the bloggers this shows that their comments have been heard, and by listing your blog in directories this will be effective when readers are searching in Google by just typing the blog’s URL. She also said that writing often is a way to keep your readers at your blog by writing more than one post a day and making your posts entertaining by giving fresh contents with a different view than other bloggers do so that your readers would not get bored. Lastly, NikkiS (n.d) said marketing your blog is a way by having a signature link to your blog on message boards and forums, and also placing a signature link in your email signature as well. Blogging community can be divided into three types as mentioned by White (2006).
Below is a picture showing the three types of blogging community.
Figure 1 - Three types of Blogging Communities
The Single Blog or Blogger Centric Community is owned by one owner or multiples authors writing in a blog. White (2006) stated that the power in this community is in the central blogger’s control which is the blog owners and they controls the topics and comments from the community to which can be seen or unseen from the site.
Next, is the Central Connecting Topic Community.
Figure 2 - Topic Centric Community
This form of community can be found with the link in common interest or topic. It is not secured where powers and identity is distributed across the community. Hyperlinks are applied in the form of blog rolls and it linked to other blogs within blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds by using RSS, trackbacks and comments mentioned by White (2006). Blog rings are used to link blogs that are discussing on the same topic.
The third type is Boundaried Communities.
Figure 3 - Boundaried Communities
White (2006) a collection of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform, bloggers can see and easily access other blogs, and readers can also create their own blogs. As a result, this may build a stronger community group where bloggers controls the message rather than on the discussion board. Boundaried communities is held by the ‘owner’ of the platform who can impose rules on the community, but is exercised by bloggers in three ways which is frequency of posting, popularity measured by how many comments a blogger gets, and social networking tools associated with the blog that help visualize relationship mentioned by White (2006).
A good example of blogging community which is Global Voices. Global Voices were set up to provide report of blogs and citizen media internationally emphasizing voices that are not commonly heard in mainstream media stated by Global Voices (2010). Within this community blog enables citizen to voice up their opinions which they can’t do it in their area. The advantages of building up a blog community are we are able to see different opinions from different angles.
References:
- Global Voices 2010, About, online, viewed 2nd May 2011, <http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/>
- Jeff Ooi 2009, Screenshots, online, viewed 2nd May 2011, <http://asiancorrespondent.com/author/jeff001/>
- Jeremiah Owyang 2007, Defining the term: “Online Community”, online, viewed 2nd May 2011, <http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/defining-the-term-community/>
- Kara Kelso and Anita DeFrank 2003, What is Blogging?, online, viewed 2nd May 2011, <http://www.blog-connection.com/what-is-blogging.htm>
- Nancy White 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, online, viewed 2nd May 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>
- NikkiS n.d, How to Build a Blogging Community, online, viewed 2nd May 2011, <http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html>
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