Classification of blogs and opinion about the most appropriate classification approach.

Herring (2004) classifies blogs into the following categories:

Source: kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/

1. Educational Blogs- the blog serves as an accurate summary of the course that prospective students or new teachers can refer to.

Source: www.becker-posner-blog.com/

2. Legal B"law"gs- Blogs by lawyers or law students, which discuss law and legal affairs are often referred to as "blawgs."

Source: http://blogs.statravel.com/

3. Travel Blogs: Allows modern-day travelers with blogs as a way to share their stories and photos, even while they are traveling around the world.

Source: http://www.bookninja.com/

4. Literary Blogs- Bloggers write about the publishing industry, writing, current fiction, poetry, literary journals, reader's diaries, criticism and genres of literature.

Source: http://www.nationhealth.blog.com/

5. Health Blogs- Recent trend deals with actual patient cases. This blog allows other physicians to submit cases to the web site. Physicians can then offer comments or help with the case.

Source: http://www.blog.facebook.com/

6. Topical Blogs- These blogs focus on very particular niche. An example is Facebook Blog, which covers nothing but news about Facebook.

Source: http://blog.sellingtoconsumers.com/

7. Business Blogs- Used as the core of the business bringing in revenue from advertising, selling products or information

Source: http://www.blogspot.com/

8. Personal Blogs- Blogs where people can easily talk about their hobbies, their life experiences, day to day events, share their own artwork, poetry, photography and allow others to contribute.

Source: http://technorati.com/

Political Blogs- Current trends show that candidates in elections, use blogs and incorporate them as part of their own campaign mechanisms.

When classifying blogs, it is necessary to primarily know your target audience, which is then followed by the topic being focused on, and then style and format. If your blog doesn’t reach your audience, it will just appear as another redundant piece of work adding onto the blogosphere. The availability of visual design elements - division of the screen into columns, image use, color and typeface choice says Hagerty (1996) and along with the placement of elements on the page permitting meaning to be suspended in the visual according to Lacan (1998), allows for non-textual self-expression.

Simons’ (2008) classification shows that she has minutely broken down the category of personal blogging and put them in separate categories of disgests, popular mechanics, exhibitioning, diary whereas in Herring (2004) classifies all these four categories in one. It seems that Simons has devised these results more on focusing on individuals rather than looking at the full picture. Herring’s classification is more or less, sums up the types are classified into. Gatewatchers and advocates contribute a small portion as compared to the blogs published on literary, health, topical legal issues. Hence I think Herring’s classification is more clearer and balanced as compared to Simon’s classifications.

References:

Hagerty, R. E 1996 The Elements and Principles of Visual Organization, Eyes on the Future: Converging Images, Ideas and Instruction, International Visual Literacy Association, pp.273-273

Herring, S. C, Scheidt, L. A, Bonus, S, & Wright, E 2004, Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs, In Proceedings of the Thirty-seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Los Alamitos

Lacan, J 1998, What is a Picture? The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd ed, pp. 126-128, London, Routledge

Simons, M 2008, Taxonomy of Blogs, ABC.net, viewed April 12^th 2010

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript