Thursday, May 8, 2008

Blogging Structure

First, I'd like to say that I find the structure of blogging a bit bizarre. Posts are placed on the blog with the most recent post at the top, and as such when one reads a blog one effectively reads anti-chronologically, or backwards. Tracking down the original themes and thoughts can become somewhat difficult, mumbled and jumbled as they will be among the more recent posts. It seems like the original thesis is almost always inevitably lost. At the same time, though, it is quite fascinating to watch the evolution of a blog. The blog moves and molds and seems to have an identity of its own, independent of the bloggers. In any case I found this an interesting thing to note, as context in which content is placed is at least as important as the content itself.

From 'New Kids on the Blog':

Last year, a survey of 3,000 blogs by the software company Perseus concluded that in the United States 91 per cent are maintained by those under 30 and 'the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life'. It estimated that by the end of this year there will be a million web logs, although most won't last a year and, like clasped diaries in the physical world, the majority will be abandoned within a month.

Thought that was quite interesting. I'd never blogged before taking a Bousquet class.

1 comment:

Sara Capule said...

This comment about the backwards chronological order of blogs was a good point that I had never thought about before. However, there are two points I'd like to make in response to this.

First, although it seems counter-intuitive, I don't think it matters if a person starts reading a blog from the very beginning. In fact, I would guess that all the popular blogs evolved and slowly gained appeal according to what people were being most responsive towards. I think that the best blogs pull you in very quickly with the first few newest entries. AND, if it is good enough that you want to read it all the way from the beginning then it must be one hell of a blog.

Second, some blogs don't rely on chronological order at all. Post secret for example, posts submissions from anyone who submits and these submissions are not connected beyond the fact that they all reveal a secret. I liked the points you made, and wanted to add these ideas to the conversation.