Types of Blogging Communities and Methods to Build Blogging Communities

Source by Personal Branding Network

Ever wonder why bloggers like Kenny Sia, Xia Xue and Dawn Yang became so famous through blogging.? Whereas others have to work extremely hard just to be in their position of recognition.  There is no doubt that, blogging communities play a big role in this matter.

Source by ShoutEm

Blogging communities are commonly acknowledged as a social network that strengthens the communication and connections among various groups of people sharing a similar interest. (Kinkekdei, 2007).It’s easy to form a blogging community. What it needed to be done is an administrator needs to register or establish a new blog community and sign in other members and feed their weblogs through an RSS-Feed.

Nancy White (2006) describes the blogging communities into three types. This consists of The Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaries Community. 

1)   The Single Blog/ Blogger Centric Communities

This blog based community is known as the very first form of blogging community where a blog is only own by one owner or organization. Through this blog-based community, readers are allowed to comment and meeting others commenters that comments on the blogger’s site.  According to David (2006), he mentioned that blogs personally defined space.  The blog owner has the central control over this community. (Nancy. 2006).  Once the blog owner decides to take down the blog, the community would most probably traumatize. However, the good side of this community is that the blog owner get to know his or hers commenters and in the same time commenters themselves hget to know each other as well.  It is a good way to bring people around the world together. Example like Dawn Yang, is a Singaporean famous celebrity blogger that blogs about her daily personal life.

2)   The Central Connecting Topic Community

This blog-based community is a network formation. (Nancy, 2006).  These forms of community are linked together based on the common passion andtopic. Blogs like food blogs, travel blogs, political blogs are usually blogs that attracts a large number of  readers to read their blog.  Besides that, in topic centric communities, both power and identity is distributed across the community. The appearances of the community do not rise or fall on one blog. ( David, 2006). Hyperlinks in the form of blogroll, link to other blogs within a blog posts, tagging, RSS-Feed are what links them among each other. Researchers kike Anjewjerden (2005), Vande Moere 2006) have been using tools to analyze post contents and interlinking structures because many bloggers don’t realize how their blogs fit into a larger network. (Nancy, 2006). Example like Global Voices is a blog community that aggregates the blogs from developing countries in an effort to get the mainstream media to pay attention to issues in their country.

3)   The Boundaries Community

Nancy (2006) mentioned that these blog-based communities are collections of blogs and blog readers that hosted a single site or a platform. Members that were given a chance to create a new blog are often members that register and join the community. For instance, MySpace.com, Yahoo 360, and Share Your Stories are examples of the Boundaries Blog. Communities like this commonly use blogs as parts of their ecosystem. Bloggers can easily access to other blogs therefore they do not necessarily need RSS-Feed and cross linking in this community. Moreover, these communities also uses tools as discussion board, social networking and instant message to build in. (Nancy, ibid). For example Share Your Story, is a site that was starting out as a discussion boar based community for parent with babies then later changed into a blogging community. Parent can share their own personal stories about their babies and also get to know other community as well.

The picture above shows a personal website of a Fashion blogger , Rumi Neely. Her blog falls under the Single Blogger/ Blogger Centric Community. This is because her blogs is a good exemplified of well-known or ' A List Blogger . Moreover, her communities also grow and develop over time. The volume of the comment on the blog post is beyond overwhelming.

References List

1. Kinkeldei. B, 2007, Whitepaper Blog Communities, Forging Connections and Promoting Growth Through Blog Communities, viewed on 16^th August 2011, <http://www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf>

2. White. N, 2006, Blogs and Community- launching a new paradigm for online community, viewed on 16^th August 2011,  < http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>

3. David.W, 2006, Move Beyond Blogging – Start Buzzing, viewed on 17^th August 2011,< http://partnerships.typepad.com/civic/networking/index.html>

Classification of Blogs and Opinion about The Most Appropriate Classification Approach

Source by StringCan

As blogs became better known as a function of new media practice, many people started to indulge themselves into the blogging era. According to Husby (2011), she said that the ability to classify blog posts into topic categories is useful for application such as search and marketing. There are several of blogs out there that consists of different content and this is how blogs are categorized into what type of blogs they are. 

Source by ModernLife

According to Martha (2011), she explains that there are four different types of blogs that many bloggers can write on. Which consists of ;

1. Corporate Blog – Blogs that contains information’s about a specific enterprise, consists its culture or it’s strategies and purposes. Examples of corporate bog are Caterpillar  and Starbucks.

2. Fashion Blogs –  Blogs that shares their fashion knowledge and share their fashion sense , style and looks to those who are interested in fashion. Examples of fashion blogs are Fashion Toast and Bryan Boy.

3. Personal Blog- The most common types of blogs where bloggers  commonly writes about there personal daily life using personal language and with emotional touch for friends and colleagues. Examples of personal blogs consists of Dawn Yang and Xia Xue.

4. Review Blog-  It is a blog where a blogger shares their review and also gives comment  of  a certain services or products. For instance like Iphones Mobiles and others. Examples of review blogs are Mummy Insider  and Booking Mama.

Source by Blogging

However, according to Margeret (2008), she have categorized the blogs into 9 different types of blogs. Which consists of ;

1. Pamphleteering Blogs – These are blogs where individuals or a group of individuals argue and protest a case. These blogs usually responds to the facts reported in the mainstream media or infrequently on other blogs. Examples of pamphleteering blogs given by Margeret were,  Andew Norton and Catalaxy.

2. The Digest Blogs – Blogs that primarily act as guidance and summaries to the things that people can access easily, for instance from mainstream media or other blogs. These blogs also I includes commentary sections as well. Examples like Fair Go Fairfax.

3. The Advocacy Blog – These are blogs that runs by established commercial organizations that focuses on single topic rather than a wide range of topic. Examples of these blogs are Haiti Support Group.

4. The Popular Mechanics Blogs – Blogs that offers a diverse set of training and advice in specialist fields and in the same time supplying the same function as magazine such as Popular Mechnics. Some of these popular mechanics blogs earn money from advertising Example like Modern Mechanix.

5. The Exhibition Blogs -  Blogs that are maintained by writers and artist that brings their creativity to a  wider public. For example like Around the World In 20 Quiilts.

6. The Gatewatcher Blogs – Blogs that allows specialist, experts and other particular knowledge of public events to watch hold of to account the’ gatekeepers’ of the conventional media. Posum Comitatus would be an example for Gatewatcher Blog. 

7. The Diary Blogs – Known as personal blogs. They are intended for friends and family of an individuals. They contain news, photos and information of a largely persona kind. Examples like Kenny Sia.

8. The Advertisement Blogs – Most of the time these blogs are known to be less honest. Companies usually pay established bloggers to boost up their services and products. Examples like Advertlets.

9. The News Blogs – Blogs that has been used to cover and even break some of the very important information to the readers. The news are reported specifically in depth therefore these sites have become sustainable business for employing potential employers. One of the examples of news blog would be Salam Pax.


After reading both articles about the Taxonomy of Blog from two different author, i personally felt that Margeret Simons's ( 2008) article was more reliable as compared to Martha's analysis about blogs. This is because Margeret Simons explain the 9 different type of blog specifically and in details. Thus, i find it rather credible as compared with Martha's.





References List


1. Martha, 2011, What is Blogging and Types of Blogs, Hellbounds Bloggers, viewed on 15th August 2011, <http://hellboundbloggers.com/2011/02/27/types-of-blogs/>


2. Simons.M, 2008, Towards a Taxonomy of Blogs, Australian Policy Online viewd on 15th August 2011, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>


3. Husby.S, 2011, Top Classification of Blog Posts Using Distant Supervision, viewed on 15th August 2011, <https://www.cs.ualberta.ca/news-events/event-calendar/2011/topic-classification-blog-posts-using-distant-supervision>