The types of blogging communities & method to build blogging communities

Blogging community is an online discussion platform which integrates various types of people who have similar area of interest, interacted online within some bounded set of technologies.

How to create a blogging community?

Blogging community can be created via blogging tools such as hyperlink to links to others blog within blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds using RSS, trackbacks and comments to building relationships with other bloggers(White N. 2006), these tools can be easily found at the web source online and aggregate of these tools will provide the ways to create a excellent blogging community. The process of blogging also became simpler with the advent of web-based tools such as Blogger, Pita, Groksoup, Diaryland, Live Journal and others (Lasica 2001)

Types of Blogging Communities

According to White N. (2006), there are three types of blogging communities. The first is Blogger Centric Community, which is owned by one owner, the power in community firmly in the central’s blogger’s control. Second, is the Topic Centric Community, which blogs can be on variety of tools, each blog controlled and customized individually, network will not fall with the failure of one blog. The third is the Boundaried Communities, which it platform centrally hosted and controlled and members may have customizations option.

An example of structure of a blogging community

Global Voices is an example of topic centric communities. It is a community aggregates blogs from developing countries in an effort to get the mainstream media to pay attention to issues in those countries. The blogger in this community maintain their own blog and falling of one blog does not affect the community. In Global Voices, there are no centralized tool conventions, both power and identity is distributed across the community, the blogger can have shared tag, post relevant to a community and each blogger selecting their own tool, controlled and customized individually (White N. 2006).


Topic Centric Communities: Global Voices

http://globalvoicesonline.org/


Reference List:

1. Branum J. 2001, “The blogging phenomenon: An overview and theorectical consideration”, viewed April 17 2010
http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm

2. White N. 2006, “Blog and Community: Launching a new paradigm for online community?” viewed April 17 2010
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community