Blogging Issue 2 : Classification of Blogs

     Blogging became to spread during 1999 and the years following. The short form of blog was coined from the word weblog (Blockstar, 2006). The increasing amount of blogs leads to classification of blogs by creating different terms. Taxonomy of blogs has been labored as it has been classified in an ordered system. Subject matter, device, media type and status of publisher are the main aspects that have been looked into thoroughly worked through and thus creating the taxonomy.

     Simon (2008) and Oech (2007), media analyst and author respectively, have come up with the taxonomy of blog that differs and somehow able to categorized the current blogs. Simon categorized the blog into nine different types based on the content or subject matter of the blog itself. Digest blog, Diary blog and Popular Mechanics blog are to name a few. However, Oech came up with four different types of blogs, which are based on values of the bloggers. The four types are distraction blog, archive blog, conversation blog and democratic blog. He managed to classify it in the blogosphere based on the motivations of a particular blogger has towards creating the blogs.

TABLE 2 : 4 MAIN TYPES OF BLOGS

     In my opinion, I would choose subject matter to classify the blog. This is because when someone wants to read or search for a particular thing, the topic will strike the mind first. For instance, if a person is looking for a movie review, a person will automatically looking for the blog which falls under a topic of ‘entertainment’. It can be vlog, linklog, sktechlog, tumblelog or even weblogs. Hence, I feel classifying the blogs according to the subject matter is important, as audience tend to search by topic. Therefore, I prefer Simon’s taxonomy of blog as it categorized the blogs based on the topics or certain field.

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REFERENCES
Ariani. G. 2008, Classification of Blogs & Example(s) of Blogging Communities, viewed on 20 August 2011, <http://geeta-ariani.blogspot.com/2008/05/classification-of-blogs-examples-of.html>

Blockstar 2006, Blog History in Timeline Form, viewed on 19 August 2011, <http://blockstar.com/blog/blog_timeline.html>

History News Network 2011, What Is a Blog?, viewed on 21 August 2011, <http://hnn.us/articles/1572.html>

Oech. R.V 2007, A taxonomy of blogs, viewed on 20 August 2011, <http://blog.creativethink.com/2007/03/a_taxonomy_of_b.html >

Simons. M 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, viewed on 20 August 2011, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>