My Reflection on "Blogs as Clubhouses"

As I mentioned in my last entry, I am still relatively new to blogging. So again, reading “Blogs as Clubhouses” was good to give me a little more insight into this new little world of its own. In the opening paragraphs of her blog, I liked how Suzanne Stefanac took all of the words that blogging critics use to put down this underground society of sorts, and she used the origins and etymology of these negative terms to just throw it right back in the faces of those who oppose her. In today’s language, dilettantes, amateurs, and cults may be used in the context of insulting terms; however, if you look back at the Latin roots of these words, the critics have actually described bloggers as delightful, loving people who are cultivating their own little community of blogs. And from my understanding as of late, that is exactly what blogging is. It’s a way for people to branch out, share ideas, let some steam off, or just simply pursue a passion (as odd or unusual as some may be).

It was also nice to learn some basic, beginner pointers for creating/maintaining a blog. From these pointers I have gained that the best way to run a successful blog is simply to be yourself. Without any “Google cred,” as Mr. Jalopy calls it, people aren’t really going to be searching for your blogs immediately; people are just going to kind of stumble upon them. So here’s how I look at it, if I was bored one day and just kind of browsing around the web, I’m not going to stop and read something if it doesn’t look interesting, and I’m not going to keep reading it if it doesn’t hold my interest. So what’s the best way to hold the attention of your audience? Chances are the people that have stopped to read your blog share something in common with you or your writing, so if you want to keep them satisfied just write your entries just as you think your thoughts. Stefanac points out a few of the ordinary points in writing, which most of us have been hearing over and over again for years, such as “do it for love, not money or fame,” “tie everything into the same topic,” “be creative, entertaining, and to the point,” “write to your audience,” and (my favorite) “don’t give up, just stick with it.” But she points out the most important tip when it comes to authoring a blog is, (as some of us may have already encountered through other pieces of writing) including your personality into your writing. Keep it exciting. Brutal honesty and a well-engineered opinion will always keep people reading. To quote Stefanac, the most successful blogs “are those that not only highlight the authors’ obsessions, but that also serve as showcases of their personality.”

Personally, I think Mr. Jalopy said it best in his interview. We all know that when your writing for print, there are obstacles such as a certain length, clarity, cleanness, and correct grammar. But when writing for a blog, there are no limits. No rules. No Boundaries. It couldn’t have been put any more precisely than Mr. Jalopy’s statement describing when he’s writing for his “Hooptyrides” blog:

“When I am writing for Hooptyrides, I am writing for my buddies. Fast and loose, peppered with dirty words and outrageous statements.”

To me it seems that’s precisely why people enjoy both reading and writing blogs. It’s our chance to break out of the norm, create our own style, and escape from the daily routine of listening to what the media/government has to say.

My First Look at Blogging: Reflecting on Rebecca Blood

I have heard a lot about blogs and blogging, but I have really never participated in or read blogs. So I guess you could consider me as a blog virgin. With that said, reading the Rebecca Blood Blog really opened my eyes to the history and growth of webblogs. I found it kind of interesting that within the last 12 years blogging really exploded. There were only a handful of blogs in 1998 and only around 23 in early 1999 before blogging began its uprising. It was interesting to see how blogging began to catch on, how blogging has evolved, and the different types of blogs that there are today.


But above all, there was one statement that really caught my attention. There is no sense in rewording it, because she couldn’t have said it any better. To quote Rebecca Blood in "Weblogs: A History and Perspective":


The promise of the web was that everyone could publish, that a thousand voices could flourish, communicate, connect. The truth was that only those people who knew how to code a web page could make their voices heard. Blogger, Pitas, and all the rest have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML the ability to publish on the web: to pontificate, remember, dream, and argue in public, as easily as they send an instant message.”


I was never really big on the whole blogging thing because I guess I really just didn’t know that much about it. But now I can see why it caught on. A blog is a way for anyone to share their opinion, find others that share the same interests, or maybe just rant about something that aggravated them that day. Whatever your reason for blogging, it’s an opportunity to be heard, an opportunity to reach out.


After reading Rebecca Blood’s blog (which I consider to be my introduction to blogging altogether), I decided to do a little browsing to see how blogging has grown today, and I came across a website blog called The Future Buzz, and I found a section on web stats from a little over a year ago, posted by Adam Singer on January 12, 2009. The site has all types of different stats on it from FaceBook to YouTube to Google (here’s the link if you want to browse around http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/), but the one that I wanted to see was the section on blogs. The stats he posted are as follows:



Blogosphere stats



· 133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

· 346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

· 900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

· 1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)

· 77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

· 81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere

· 59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years


source


So how many blogs are there worldwide? I leave you with this. According to <http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2005/12/terrifying-internet-facts/>, as of the beginning of 2010 the estimated number of blogs worldwide is nearing 1 billion.

Introduction

My name is Jon Northrop. I am a junior at URI and I am double majoring in communication and public relations. I have a wide spread knowledge of technology as a whole, and I am looking to further expand that knowledge. Through this class, I hope to develop a more efficient and professional style of communicating through electronic environments.