Blogging Community

Sources: http://www.erikcunningham.com/blog/images/Link_Network.jpg

Blogging community refers to online community of people who share interests and activities, and are exploring the others. Blogosphere is used to describe the online community of bloggers and the content they publish. White,N(2006) claimed blogs as personal publishing platforms, but community always found its infrastructural roots in forums and email lists, or online conversation. Blogster is one of a good examples of blogging community. There are 75,153 bloggers are joining this community with different types of blogs based on their interest.

To create a blogging community we need:

- Permalink or a permanent and direct link to a particular blog post.

- Q & A sections or comments, so that your blog will be active.

- Tag or label your topic based on the reader interests.

- Forums

- Aggregated feed (using RSS)

- Sharing through social networking, such as Facebook, Twitter, or myspace.

Blog Communities currently

According to White, N (2006), she found out that there are three main patterns wide variety of blogging communities based on technology/design, social architecture, subject matter, and lifecycle.

3 different types of blogging community

1. Single Blog/ Blogger Centric Community

- Well known as 'a list bloggers'

- Owned: one owner or organisation that the only one can set rules and norms of engagement, and setting the conversation topic / the subject matter. eg: Anecdote

- Overwhelming comments on the blog, or the commentators will add these into their daily reading/shift entirely to the new blog.

2. Central Connecting Topic Community

- A community that arises between the combination of subject matter (domain) and membership (community), e.g: food bloggers (foodproff), or travel bloggers (BootsnAll ravel Blogs)

- No single technological platform.

- To shared with the community, they could link through: hyperlinks, blogrolls, RSS, tagging, trackbacks, and comments.

3. Boundaried Communities.

- Collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site/platform

- Similar as traditional forum, eg. Myspace.com, edublogs

- Tend to: discussion boards, social networking features,wikis, and instant messaging built in.

An Example of the structure of Blogging Community

Based from explanation above, jeffooi.com is one of a good example's blog community in Malaysia. It is one of prominence political blog in Malaysia that have correspondent with Asia's Internet Newspaper, Aggregated Blog & Video (Asian Correspondent). In term of structure of the blogging community, jeffooi.com fall in category central connecting topic community (White, N 2006). He still maintain his own blog, but he also have taking a part on Asian correspondent. The communities form within the network as people find more specific niches and interests.

An example of Jeffoi's blog by implying technology aspect in central connecting topic community blogs.

The recent comments, where the members of community will give comment based on the topic that interested.

This is where members will learn and support each other idea.

References:

Powell, F 2009, Blog tips: A glossary of blog terms, retrieved online on 19 April 2010, from:http://businessblogschool.com/business-blogging-tips-a-glossary-of-blog-terms/

Rowse, D 2008, How to Build Community on Your Blog, retrieved on 19 April 2010, from:http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/04/26/how-to-build-community-on-your-blog/

The Motive Web Design Glossary, Web log (blog), Blogging, Bloggers, Blogosphere, retrieved online on 19 April 2010, from: http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/blogs.php#types

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community-launching a new paradigm for online community?, retrieved online on 18 April 2010, from: http://kt.flexibelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial-11-editorial/blogs-and-community--launching-a-new-paradagim-for-online-community