Sunday, October 10, 2010

Classification of Blogs

Types-Of-Blogs
The different types of blogs according to ProBloger.net in 2008.


There are a myriad of blogs in the blogosphere. Below are some general classifications of blogs, differentiated mostly by its contents:


  • Personal blogs – an ongoing diary-like commentary on life. The most traditional and common type of blogs.
  • Corporate & organizational blogs – these mainly serve a business purpose, as an internal outreach channel to enhance communication and corporate culture or externally as a public relations and marketing tool. In 2009, the US government under President Barrack Obama introduced the white house blog, garnering many followers and is among the top 100 blogs today. Read about corporate blogs on Nielsen's Alertbox which explains why summaries of many articles draw more reader interest than full articles on corporate blogs.
  • Genre blogs – Focus is on a particular or niche subject – for example, politics, travel, photography, food, green living, fashion, education, art, classical music and legal issues. An example is gizmodo.com which is a technology weblog about consumer electronics and offers up-to-date coverage of the latest high-tech gadgets in the technology industry.
  • Microblogs – a broadcast medium of shorter postings, usually a sentence or two. A popular microblog is Twitter. A way to capture the moment, it allows instantaneous sharing of thoughts with the blogger’s online community, allowing privacy settings.

Blogs can also be classified by the way they are delivered, such as mobile
device-enabled posting (eg mlogs via instant messaging, text messages or
MP3, etc), video blogging (vlogs) or by the way they are written (eg
typecast blogging where typewritten blogs are scanned and published).


There are currently no standard classification system in place. However,
they are mostly sorted by contents. According to Smich (2010), the 10
different blog types are:
  • Cultural Blog: About theater, arts, music and popular culture.
  • Business Blog: About business related topics and stock markets.
  • Personal Blog: The most common blog. Majority of the people use this blog to generate directly the income or drive traffic to other websites.
  • Topic Blog: Focuses on the function such as few of the search engines present currently (eg MyBlogLog).
  • Collaborative Blog: Usually managed or written by two or more authors.
  • Science Blog: Used to disseminate data and information.
  • Eclectic Blog: Focuses on niches collaboratively or individually made.
  • Directory Blog: Focuses on specific events and news, acts as a directory.
  • Educational Blog: Commonly used by students to post research papers, articles or their findings.
  • Forum Blog: Permits two or more bloggers for posting discussion on the net.
Margaret Simons (2008), on the other hand, classifies them into 9
categories based on their agenda / intended role:
  • Pamphleting blog:  
  • Digest blog
  • Advocacy blog
  • Popular mechanics blog (aka tutorial blogs)
  • Exhibition blog
  • Gatewatcher blog
  • Diary blog
  • Advertisement blog
  • News blog
While I personally believe there will never be a standardized classification
system as the genres and delivery of blogs will continually evolve, I do
quite agree with Simons' agenda-type categorizations. What do you think? 


Related posts:
Reference
Nielsen, J 2010, Corporate Blogs: Front Page Structure, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox 9 August 2010, viewed 8
October 2010, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/blog-front-pages.html>

Simons, M 2008, Towards a Taxonomy of Blogs, Australian Policy Online, 11 September 2008, viewed 10
October 2010, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>

Smich, M 2010, Different types of blogs, myhosting, 8 April 2010, viewed 10 October 2010,

Video source: Socialtraining.wetpaint.com, accessed 9 Oct 2010. 
<http://socialtraining.wetpaint.com/page/Micro-Blogs>

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