Personal or Public?

The term blog has been around for about a decade now since 1997, firstly introduced by John Barger as “web log” (Wartham.J 2007). It was the perfect term to describe a collection of information that was posted online then. However, according to Blog Pulse (2011), there are now 168,884,118 number of blogs existing and it has been a hassle trying to identify these blogs from one another as their shared information are extremely varied.

According to the interview with Margaret Simons, freelance journalist with Anthony Funnel, presenter of ABC Radio National – Simons has come up with 9 blogging classifications; Digest Blog, Advocacy Blog, Popular Mechanics, Exhibition blog, Gatewatcher Blog, Diary, Advertisement and finally News (ABC Radio 2008). On the other hand, Wordpress has categorized blogs into 10 different sections, which are the personal, business, schools, non-profits, politics, military, private sports, how-to, tips and reviews.

Question : Is there really a better classification?

In my opinion, the better classification method among the ABC radio transcript and Wordpress would be Margaret Simons’ because it is very detailed and extensive. Internet lurkers can easily navigate through such classification of blogs easily, rather than having to browse through vague categories that Wordpress has suggested.

Well, with any method – I’m sure the information seeker would still have to do a little bit of advanced searching to land themselves with the wanted information - no matter the category.Topics are bound to fall in numerous categorizations at many occasions, so every method extended will still be a great help to many others.

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References : 

1. ABC Radio 2008, The Media Report : A Taxanomy of Blogs, [Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript]
2. Blog Pulse 2011, Blogpulse Stats, [Available at: http://blogpulse.com]
3. Wartham.J 2007, After 10 Years of Blogs, the Future's Brighter Than Ever, [Available at: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/12/blog_anniversary]