Introduction

What are blogs?
The word ‘blog’ is derived from the combination of the two words, web and log (Net Alert). Blogs are online journals created by individuals with different purposes and posted on the world wide web. Blogs generally consist of text, images and sometimes also videos.

Blog/WebLog: a web page containing brief, chronologically arranged items of information. A blog can take the form of a diary, journal, what's new page, or links to other web sites.
Peter Scott, Internet Librarian 2001
(Department of Education and Training: Government of Western Australia)

The blogging scene in Malaysia
Blogs are seen as an alternative source of information but most bloggers in Malaysia use blogs for personal use. Personal blogs are filled with updates, happenings and posted pictures or videos. There are also special interest blogs and corporate blogs. Special interest blogs are blogs that posts about a certain issue or their topic of interest and the blog is shared by a small community with common interests. There are also blogs used for corporate purposes these days. They use blogs to promote their products, inform the public about the company or to update their employees. Blogs are seen as interactive media because they usually hold discussions and the communication among members and administration is fairly active.

Classification of blogs
Generally, people blog with the purpose of informing their target audience and it is a 'tool' for expression. “They give people the opportunity to publish on the Internet their thoughts and reflections of issues important to them” (NetAlert).

There are 3 categories:
i) Professionals/ business
External audience - To promote their products and inform the public on current happenings
Internal audience - To update employees and to post announcements

ii) Interest groups/ passion
To hold discussions, exchange point of views, to post updates on their latest interests and to share personal experiences.

iii) Communicating with family and friends
To post updates on life, current happenings, to post up photos or videos so that family and friends can be updated and to keep in touch.

Personally, I do not think that blogging is a waste of time because blogging is a form of keeping a daily journal but only that it is online. Not does it only enable one to express ourselves, but it also enables us to post up photos or videos in our personal blogs which we cannot do in diaries. These are reffered to as multimodal texts; “texts that have more than one ‘mode’, so that meaning is communicated through a synchronisation of modes” (Walsh, 2006).

Blogs as a current phenomenon
According to an online research firm Technorati, one new blog is created every second in 2005. This shows how blogs have a booming success rate and is one of the most popular thing among internet users. And now, according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs every day and bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. This shows how blogs are widely used all over the world.

Designing for print versus designing for online
According to Jakob Nielsen,
• 79% of users scan the page instead of reading word-for-word
• Reading from computer screens is 25% slower than from paper
• Web content should have 50% of the word count of its paper equivalent

Therefore, for an online document to be effective, it must have more white space, contain the most imporant points (preferably just the gist of the information), and less lengthy because the attention span reading from the computer screen is less as eyes get tired faster and reading from the computer is 25% slower than reading from paper.

It is important for good and effective document design to attract audiences. According to Penman (1998), a document’s functionality is dependent on its structure according to the readers’ habits, expectations and context of use. The document design for print and online media has different functions, objectives and target audiences therefore they cannot have the same document design and layout. This is because, a particular structural element may work well in one document but not in another, if the readers or context are different (Penman, 1998).

New forms of media publishing
Blogs have several different types such as moblog, vlog, linklog, sketchblog, photolog, tumblelog, and artlog. These terms are coined by their different categories and their usage. Examples are as follows: moblogs are mobile mobile device written blogs, vlogs are blogs comprising of videos, linklogs are blogs comprising of links, sketchblogs are blogs comprising of sketches and photologs are blogs comprising of photos, tumblelogs are blogs which contains shorter posts and mixed media types, and artlogs are a form of art sharing and publishing in the format of a blog.

These blogs serves different purposes and specialises in different areas. There are a variety of different types of blogs with different types of audience. Technology is so advance that these new forms of media publishing cater to a specific target audience. There is so much we can discuss and learn.

Hang in there for more posts on media and publishing issues!


References:
Department of Education and Training: Government of Western Australia, 2007, Weblogs, viewed on 22 October 2007
http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/weblogs/


Lester, Paul M. (2003) Visual communication : images with messages, 3rd edn, Thomson Wadsworth, USA.

NetAlert, 2007, Why are blogs popular and what are their benefits, viewed on 23 October 2007,
http://www.netalert.gov.au/advice/services/blogs/Why_are_blogs_popular_and_what_are_their_benefits.html


Nielsen, J 2007, Writing for web, viewed 23 October 2007,
http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/.


Penman, R 1998, Document structures and readers’ habits, Communication news, vol.11, no. 2, pp. 10-11.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating text for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.


Technorati, 2007, Welcome to technorati, viewed on 23 October 2007,
http://technorati.com/about/

Young, K 2005, New blog created every second, viewed on 23 October 2007,
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2140722/blog-every-second-tecnorati

Wikipedia, 2007, Blog, viewed 22 October 2007,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog