Blogs

In my opinion, a blog can be defined by two criteria; type of author and type of content.

If we start with the first one, the author, you will find three different kinds of blogs:

- The anonymous one characterized by not revealing significant personal information about the author. The blog do generally not display names of the people the author writes about and no personal images are added to the blog.

- The semi-anonymous one The author reveals some amount of information but not last name. At the same time the author is not too afraid of publishing information that might make it possible to identify her/him. Personal photos are used but if so, mostly of objects and or of themselves but with out showing their face.

- The public oneThe author states who s/he is, that this is his/her blog and do not mind publishing information about him/herself. Photos are regularly used and his/her picture is often displayed at the top of the page.

The second criteria, the content of the blog, can be divided as follow:

- Personal Diary like, own thoughts and stories from the authors’ life.

The personal blog can also be divided in two groups, those who writes mainly for strangers (those blogs are written by the anonymous author) or those who writes mainly for friends (the semi-anonymous or sometimes public, author).

- Interest The blog features posts about mainly one topic; fashion, cars, a music genre, a game, politics, travel etc. These blogs can sometimes be to some extent combined with a personal blog. Are usually semi-anonymous or public.

- Professional The content of the blog is written by someone who is (in many cases) paid for doing that or for promoting him/herself. This could be a journalist, politician, artist or sometimes a "normal" blogger, usually writing about a specific interest that has been so successful so s/he actually starts doing it as a job.


There is also the ver public self creating blogs, that becomes more homepages than blogs. For example tjuvlyssnat.se, konsumbloggen.se or overheardinny.com where the readers becomes the authors by contributing with their own material

With an increased number of readers, a blog often transfer from one genre to another, a semi-anonymous personal/interest blog might change to a public blog only focusing on the interest and might in the end become a professional blog when the amount of readers are very high.

The communities that exist around blogs are mostly to be find among the personal and interest blogs, specifically among the anonymous or semi-anonymous ones. These communities are as active and alive as those that are to be find on spaces that only exist for networking purposes. To blog is not only to write and to be read, it is to read others blogs, to comment, to receive comment and to answer them.