Introduction

Introduction

As the world is now introduced to internet, things such as personal diary and views are no longer in favor to write with pen but type and post in the internet. Hence, weblog has made its limelight among the teenagers and adults. According to Webweevers (2007), ‘blog is a journal (online dairy) made available on the Internet/web by individual’, whereas ‘blogging is the active updating of a blog by the person who maintains the postings’.

A study done by Microsoft MSN portal has proven that 50 per cent of Malaysian bloggers use blogs to express themselves, while 63 per cent uses blogs for entertainment purpose. Among the entertainment, blogs related to technology, travel and music are ranked the most popular. In pan-Asia however, 46 per cent of the online public owns a blog and is believe that in India, the amount of male bloggers are more than female bloggers. (Ooi, J 2006)

Purpose behind blogging activity

If you are thinking of setting up a low-investment business, you may consider of selling your business through blog as it is almost cost-free and convenient. For example, Cuppacakes ,an e-business in Malaysia that sells cupcakes. Besides that, you may also blog about your daily experience as a way to communicate with your family and friends while keep them updating on your recent activities.

With that, I personally think that blogging is not only an excellent way to spend our time with, it also helps us to understand more about our friends and the latest issues happening around the world.

Classification of blogs

Among the various types of weblogs including Blogspot, Xanga, Mutiply, Wordpress and Wretch which targets on the Chinese community. Different blogging topics can be found on the internet and among the famous ones are politics, fashion, law and entertainment. Take politics as example, the government figure such as U.S Governor Jon Corzine uses the blog to form a community to communicate with each others. Whereas in Malaysia, one of the government figures who blog is Lim Kit Siang , and the famous blogger who writes comment on Malaysia politics is JeffOoi . Hence, a blog may be owned by a corporate body or individually.

As technology became more advance, blogs are no longer just plain words but has expanded to video blogging (vlog), blogging through mobile (moblog), music blog and etc.(Juiceenewsdaily 2005) .

My view of a good blog consist of 'information value, salience and framing' (Kress and Leeuwen, 2006) as it captures my attention before the context.

Blogging Community

The blogging community, also known as blogosphere includes people from various countries. It helps to group up people who share the same interest on blogging. Among the famous blogging communities are exchanging opinion in Metafilter as blogosphere shares latest issues such as news around the world with each others. Besides that e-shopping is also a trend among the blogging communiy. TuanGou is one of the best example where China people gather to do their shopping there.

Designing for online vs. print

According to Jakob Nielsen (1997), the text of a webpage should be succinct, scannability and in hypertext structure as people do not like to read a webpage dominated by text, unless they have too. When writing for a web, the content should be 50% less than the hardcopy as reading through a computer screen is 25% slower than reading a paper. A good weblog should always consider the usability issues to allow the readers to understand the content. If you have to include a page full of words, do separate them into short paragraphs with subheadings and highlighted keywords. (Nielsen, 1997)

When designing for online, you should not include too many pictures and let the page flow too long as it might slower the loading process and terminate the interaction with the user. On the other hand, designing for print is more convenient as print pages are fixed and do not takes time to load. However, designer should limit the color usage to save cost. (Nielsen, 1997)

New forms of media publishing
The latest trend of blogging is VBlog (video blogging) where bloggers post self-produced home-video online. Best examples are Youtube and Tudou (a famous vblog among the Chinese). Beside posting own videos online, public may also watch movies and latest news through video blogging website. Hence, i will explain more detailed about video blogging is the later posting.

One of the famous videos found in Youtube



Additional Link
Cuppacakes

Reference List:

Jakob, N. 1997, Be Succint (Writing for the web), [Online, accessed 01 June 2007] URL: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html

Kress, G. & Leeuwen, T.V. 2006, ‘Chapter six: The meaning of composition’, Reading images: The Grammar of Visual Design, (2nd ed.), Routledge, London.

Ooi, J. 2006, Blogging for social connection and self-expression [Online, accessed 7 June 2007]
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/blog/lemaklemang/0,39056113,61971059,00.htm

Webweevers, 2007, Definition of Blog, Meaning and What a Blog Is [Online, accessed 01 June 2007] URL: http://webweevers.com/blog.htm