Blog

A blog is a web site, where individuals usually use to update entires of commentary, descreption of events, or other material, eg graphics or videos. According to Robin Nobles, Blog is also used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog and entries are usually displayed in the order of reverse-chronologically.

Why blog?

Why are people so interested in blogging and what motivates them to update every single day? Well, there are many reasons why people choose to blog, and one of the main reasons is because he or she wants to voice out and wants to be heard by the publics. Some bloggers do it because they love to write, or share their opinions and they are certain people ho blogs just because everyone around them is blogging and they want to follow the trend. Today, some bloggers are earning money just by blogging, for example for famous and most visited blogs, those blggers are given opportunities to travel around the world with sponsor by companies or generating revenues by having advertisement posted on their blogs.

The current phenomenon

Blogging used to be basic and simple source of information, but today’s blogging has progress form a boring and dull technical or inspired dialogue to a different and creative web phenomenon. Based on the information given by Technorati, the size of the blogosphere has increase continuously.

The size of blogosphere per day for the past 90 days

Blogs nowadays are not categorizing as a form of personal journal but increasingly becoming and developing a stand for industry opportunities. Back in those days, advertising can only be in the form of paper materials, ink and word of mouth, but today blogs are also used to market products and services through online advertisement to reach wide range of audience around the world. The advantage of online advertising is saving time, as users can get immediate customer feedbacks and editing is much more simple and quick,

Blogging communities

Based on my opinion online communities is a meeting place where everyone has the same interests. Dictionary (2008) explains that a community is a group of people sharing the same environment. With blogs, people are able to communicate and connect with one another by having the same interest. Members do not necessarily need to have a strong bond with one another, they may be relatively strangers. Through blogs , these communities communicates with one another by giving comments and ideas. There are several types of blogging communities, such as The Blogosphere, Blog Search Engines, Blogging Communities and Directories and Blogging and Advertising (Cohen, 1985). Blog search engines are used to search blog contents, for example Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati. Technoati is one of the most famous search engine blog, as it provides information on popular searches and tags used to categorize blog posting.

Print designing vs online designing

According to Miller (2008), designing for print media and designing for the web are both completely different experience. These two can be compared based on different topic arrears, such as types of media, audience, layout, color, technology and careers. Nielsen (1999), print design is 2 dimensional, which means that readers are able to turn the page but for web design is 1 dimensional and N-dimensional. A web page is basically a scrolling experience for readers. Nielsen (1999), also stated that the contents posted online has to be brief, understandable, easy to read and has to be half as short as compared to print materials, as he did a research saying that people read 25% slower online.

Print materials can only daze readers with high-impact visualization, but the online medium has the better advantage as the web can show moving image control by users and allows user to control interactive widgets. For example, web technology can make maps more intresting by allowing users to click on a city and region or to excess to another page for further information. Schriver explains that it is important to have visual to support the text; he believes that “Most of the time prose and graphics are integrated as part of the body text in order to help users represent the content.” Anyhitng that is a great print design is probably going to be a lousy web design, as there are so many differences between the two media (Nielsen, 1999).

New forms of media publishing

Most technologies defined “new media” as digital, with the characteristics of being manipulable, networkable, dense, compressible, and impartial (Wkipedia, 2008). According to flew (2002), the result of the evolution of new media technologies has created new form of writing and publishing. Today’s newspapers are not only in the form of print materials but based on online version. Traditional newspapers and magazines are now accessible via online and this enables magazines to target a wide range of target audience. Nowadays people do not have any problems in reading international newspaper everyday. Besides that, business, social groups and communities now are forming blogs to get hat ever is out there. As the cyber world now not only connects people but also give great opportunities for advertiser and marketers to market their product and services. Ramona Koval aired on ABC Radio National says that, the digital world has brought all sorts of new possibilities for ways that allows people to communicate their opinions, experiences, ideas and dreams to share with people near or far through blogs, online forums and internet (Big ideas, 2005).

Reference:

Big Ideas 2005, New Media Publishing [Online, accessed 10 November 2008].

URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigidea/stories/s1485827.htm

Technorati 2008, The size of blogosphere per day for the past 90 days [Online, accessed 10 November 2008].
URL: <http://www.technorati.com/chart/the+size+of+blogosphere?language=en&authority=a4>.

Nielsen, J 2007, Writing for Web [Online, accessed 25 Oct. 2007]
URL: http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/.

Nielsen, J 1999, difference between print design and web design [Online, accessed 3 November. 2008]
URL: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html

Wikipedia 2007, New Media [Online, accessed 10 November 2008]
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media