Someone over at MSU (hi Tammy) noticed a comment I posted awhile ago over at CyberSoc on the issue of blog types and asked that I expand a bit on the idea. As luck would have it, I’ve recycled this idea a number of times over the last few years for a number of work presentations… here’s the current iteration of the powerpoint, for those who’d like to follow along.
Here are the proposed 4 blog types along with a brief explanation for each:
- Individual
- An individual blog is the typical single author blog– my blog is one example 🙂
- Collaboration
- A collaborative blog is one where there are a small number of authors who all have rights to post. Often, this is a small group with similar interests who want to share ideas and information. An example of this would be my colleagues’ blog.
- Submission
- A submission blog is an extension of an individual or collaborative blog. Readers submit stories that the authors deem fit to post, often with some commentary. This type interests me, in part, because of the increased level of collaboration in creating the blog and the greater degree of editorial control that the authors hold over the content. My favorite example of this type is Slashdot.
- Mixed
- The idea behind mixed is that blogs are such organic entities, that one type of blog might develop into another or change back and forth. One example of this phenomenon might be “guest blogging” (example: Larry Lessig frequently has other internet law thinkers post to his blog while he is away). Another possibility might be sub-categories of the submission type (example: an individual or group blog that periodically accepts submissions or responds to reader questions).
Thinking further, I’d like to add one more: Network.
At one of my presentations on this typology, a hot question was, “how do I blog for just my friends?” The easiest answer I could think of was to use a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, which have features to “post” or “blog” to only people in your network. This more private, personal, job, research (etc.) or social network type of blogging could be considered a form of the individual blog, but the tight social ties among the audience might give it a much different flavor.
So there appear to be a number of different factors when thinking of blog types: authors, editors, audience, and the degree of personal ties between each. Robin @ CyberSoc’s types are perhaps a similar way to look at the picture. What this model adds is placing individual blogs in the greater context of the blogosphere (ranging from closed blogs discussing a single topic in a “corner” of the Internet, to an engaged blog that critiques or builds on information in the “conversation” between blogs).
The last point I’d add is the central role that technological features play in all of these types. Without features like author and review control, trackback, ping, and closed-network blogging might have made the blogosphere a much more traditional-media-like forum. Who knows what the next features might add to the mix.
Please let me know what you think in the comments!
Excellent post John! I like that you add a “Network” blog into the mix, and I agree that in this case the “social network” doesn’t only have to be a network of friends.
For the past several months we’ve been exploring course blogging, which for me fits somewhere in your taxonomy between a collaborative blog and a network blog. Here, when I talk about a course blog, I’m thinking of blogs that are “locked down” so that only students in the class can post and read content.
While I’ve had a few educational bloggers tell me that “if it isn’t wide open to the public, it isn’t a blog,” I’d argue that the most important benefits of educational blogging begin when there is an audience for student writing, even if that audience is limited to the people in a particular learning community. I think your idea of a network blog fits in with this because it evokes a “connected audience,” an audience that shares a set of friends, experiences, or in the case of course blog, a set of educational interests and goals.
I could see similar benefits in a private “network” blog for a professional community, a research team, a working group, or any other “social network” that wants to blog for a known audience.
So, what do you think, is there a place for blogs that don’t post to the “world stage?” If so, where do they fit in?
Right…I’d agree that it’s all about the network. That’s the one strength of Robin @ CyberSoc’s types over mine in that the focus there is over how information is shared rather than created. More private, social network-y blogs really focus on this by building on already existing networks.
I would say that a course blog does the same thing: capitalizing on an already existing social network (be it the course or a collaborative group).
Do blogs need to post to the world stage? I think of this almost in terms of the tree falling in the woods: if you post to a blog and no one (except spiders) read it–are you blogging? Or, to take another analogy, is a podcaster who isn’t making an effective use of rss feeds really podcasting?
I like to try to avoid pronouncements of how a technology should be used, because there is no way to predict how users will put a technology to use. These unexpected uses are frequently the innovative sorts of ideas that push towards the “next” technology.
HI John:
Thanks for the great post! I cited your blog typology in my class construct paper about blog, and it’s really great! I would add more examples of the “network” blogs–Blogs function in MSN instant messanger: you can open the reading limit to only few friends who are in your MSN friend lists. The same is my Taiwaness blog that I can add friends who have the blog’s account and only those friends can read or comment on my blogs.
Therefore, I think network blogs can fit into the four catogories of blogs you mentioned. Maybe I would say it’s just the function that bloggers can decide who can read or who can comment their blogs instead of a new category of blog. This “audience” function exists in the four kinds of blogs too: Different levels of bloggers contribute to the content (individual, group, submission, mixed), and these blogs can dicide who can read and who can comment.
In my paper I try to define what blog is and I argue that if nobody “can” read your blog–although it turns out to be an online private journal–the form is still a blog. I know some people would argue that the essence of blogs is “community”, but blog users use blogs in so many different ways. One of my professor said maybe it’s time to give a new name of the “blog.”
Thanks a lot for this great idea! 🙂
John,
I stumbled across this post as I was looking around for people struggling with defining and categorizing what many people call “blogs.”
Thanks, John for you work in this area. I’m head of strategic planning for a marketing communications firm (www.brodeur.com). I find that understanding what is (and is not) a “blog” is no small task.
The question I’d pose is this: when does a blog become simply the label of a format for what otherwise appears to be mainstream media? Is Gizmodo a blog or simply an electronic magazine. HuffingtonPost? TechCrunch? GigaOm?
I believe they share more points in common with traditional media than with the humble origins of personal web logs. And Gawker? Federated? What about the blog syndicates? They’re looking more and more like Hearst and Gannett.
Best,
Jerry Johnson
http://www.jerrysjuicebar.com
Hi Jerry,
Sorry to take so long; my WordPress didn’t alert me to your reply.
While something like Gizmodo or Slashdot gets labeled a blog simply because it technically follows the “timed posting” model, I wonder if what separates them from a more traditional blog is personality or voice. For example, CNet features a number of “blogs,” but all seem to fall under the larger editorial umbrella of CNet.com. This is off the top of my head, but perhaps a blog leans more towards traditional media when it loses a more personal editorial voice. Wired has great writers, but they don’t give the same “feel” as a letter from a friend.
You might search my blog for comments on editors for more of my feelings on the issue.
Thanks for reading!