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Advantages of Weblogs
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Though I do not maintain a weblog of my own, I have been
an avid reader of blogs for about two years. I find
this new form of expression on the Internet to be
absolutely fascinating. There are blogs on just about
every topic imaginable, and if you have an inquisitive
mind, there is really no end to the amount of blog
reading you can do on a daily basis. For me, it has
gotten to the point where I can no longer keep current
with all the interesting blogs I've discovered. Twenty
blogs is about all I have time for, and while that seems
like plenty, I'd like to read more.
What do weblogs allow creators and receivers of
content to do that other technologies have not?
The most obvious answer to this question is that they
allow the two parties to interact. Newspapers don't do
this, and neither does television. Popular weblog
authors get nearly instant feedback from their audience,
both in the form of cumulative page hits, and also via
the bulletin boards that most weblogs provide.
Because weblogs have no editorial oversight, content
creators have the freedom to post subject-matter on
anything they choose. A traditional print journalist
often has a story assigned to him or her. This is not
the case in the blogoshpere. Every individual has the
liberty to go any route they choose. Admittedly, if
they write about something uninspiring, they get a
lackluster response. But if their postings are unique
and original, they tend to generate some conversation.
As Graham Lampa stated in his article about the
blogosphere, "At its most developed point, the so-called
link-commentary style of blogging becomes
conversational, with the emergent web of connections
growing denser with each additional post." Apart from
letters-to-the-editor, this feedback loop is mostly
non-existant within Big Media.
The other major thing that weblogs provide for that old
technologies do not is collaboration. Teams of people
can take on certain aspects of a topic and report back
within the same space. Your typical newspaper cannot
afford to employ ten people to cover the same story, but
this is made simple with a 'Wiki'.
I am pleased to see that Uthink, the UofM's new weblog
platform, "Allows blog owners to easily attach other
authors to their blogs to create team blogs, class
blogs, club blogs, etc." I predict that over time this
service, which appears to have been launched quite
recently, will become an integral part of being a
student at the university. Much like e-mail is now. |
