Blogging

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Discussion

Blogs defined as 'the self in conversation

By David Weinberger:

"And it seems to me that one of the reasons why weblogs are being maintained by people who have a handful of readers, as well as by people who have many readers, is that the weblogs are doing something for that person, and for the groups that form around the weblogs. So, for example, a big part of it is that weblogs are a way that we have a voice on the Web. And, in fact, not simply voice, because we had that before. We could have posted a Web page or joined a discussion group or whatever. Weblogs are persistent. That space stays there, and every day or five times a week or whatever it is, you update that page. And people come back to that page, and that page becomes sort of your proxy self on the Web. The promise of the homepage was that we would have a persistent place that would be our Web presence. Well, now we do. And they're called weblogs, so weblogs are self, and they're self in conversation with others. So much of weblogging involves responding to other people or getting comments or linking to other people. So that's a big deal to have now a place that is a Web self that's created by writing and is created in conversation with other people. Of course that's a big deal. It doesn't have much to do with the media." (http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/transcript_weinberger1_050201/pfindex.html)


Blogs as a mirror of life

By Kamigoroshi at http://kamigoroshi.net/web/blogging/the-ultimate-description-of-blogging :


"Blogging is a reflection in the mirror of what we want to show to the world. For the most part, blogging is about us. It is the mirror image of who we are and what we are. If you run a business with a product, your blog about it should be the reflection of your product and not yourself. Because of this, it's easy for a lot of us to go wrong when we mix doing business with being personal. Sometimes we forget about mirroring the image of our product and end up mirroring the image of our selves.

Blogging is a state of self. For people like me who keep our blogs for personal use, it is the moment in time when we thought the things we wrote down. It's not just the actual words that define the state of self, but more the motives why we wrote them. Did we feel the chaos of emotions of the moment as we pounded the words down? Did we write for the sake of writing because we don't want to be left out from the others? Did we empathise with our readers when we informed them about how our product is progressing?

Our motives no matter how ulterior they are, show the world the fragmented images of yourself. You could be the most read blogger in the world, but come out looking like an insincere person that would write anything because you needed the hits. You could also be the most underrated blogger in the region, but be bespoken for by the people who know that what you're writing is true whether loved or hated.

It's understandable that people take this for granted, but it shouldn't be overlooked either way, especially if you run a business off it because it. After all, motives define character and character builds reputation. Good businesses always build from the ground up.

Blogging is a marker for improvement. Every post is a frozen moment in time. While the past lies in the past and we should move on from it. It's marker to tell yourself how far you've gone from where you last posted. Where are you now from a year ago? Have you learnt anything from the moments that passed before? Have you grown older with your readers or have you grown up with them?

Remember, blogging like anything in life leaves plenty of room for improvement. Sometimes we can discover untapped talent from blogging. Sometimes we can discover new things we have never knew before. Plenty of times we connect with people from our blogs and with that learn that the world is a whole lot bigger and paradoxically smaller than what we once thought.

Blogging is no different from real life. You are who you are in your blog. Whether it be your expression of feelings, your opinions in commentary or your product as a business. Your blog is a place to be free to express it all. At the same time it is the place where your expression can be expressed upon. With freedom comes the awareness that you're not the only one in the world with the same thought, neither is your thought the only one in the world.

Connecting with people is part of that freedom. So is learning how we should express our thoughts, learning what words we should pay attention to and most importantly how to connect with the people who we are expressing ourselves to. If you can't do that on a written medium, how can we expect to perform the same thing to a greater degree in real life?

I could go on and on about what blogging is all about, but the road that leads from it is something we learn everyday. Blogging can be a part of life, but by no means is life a part of blogging. It is the reflection of who we are in the worded mirror. It is a fragment of perspectives that define our individuality, uniqueness and paradoxically our similarities. At the end of it, blogging is about you." (http://kamigoroshi.net/web/blogging/the-ultimate-description-of-blogging)


The Jargon of the Blogosphere

Blogroll: A list of active links to other blogs. Several online newspapers, such as the Washington Post, even have blogrolls to sites that they deem credible.

CAPTCHA:

From the Wikipedia:

"The term "CAPTCHA" was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper (all of Carnegie Mellon University), and John Langford (then of IBM). It is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."


Massed Media: Opposed to Mass Media (the one to many), massed media can only occur in a truly democratic open sphere, where the participants contribute their stories and tidbits to the overall them, the many to many.

Neterate: To be conversant in the mores of the web

Sock puppet: A fake person created by a writer or commentator to add comments of “ditto” to a blog post or comment. Sometimes used as an insult for a person unable to think for him or herself." (http://thejournal.epluribusmedia.net/index.php/book-reviews/38-all-reviews/156-a-review-of-aaron-barlows-blogging-america-the-new-public-sphere)

More Information

Weblogs as a process of mass-amateurisation, not mass-professionalistion, at http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html

(13.11.06) My 50 favorite blogging resources (www.pronetadvertising.com)