The blog about the blog

I have always enjoyed finding interesting blogs, but there are so many out there that it is a challenge to narrow it down…and I usually don’t keep up with any one for an extended period of time. I prefer the micro-blogs of Twitter and Facebook. I even kept my own blog for a while, but I used it as a journal and abandoned that for the sake of privacy. For this assignment I first googled “popular blogs” and found a site with a listing of 50 top blogs, based on varied interests and readership. I’m sure that different criteria has been established to ceate other “top 50” or “top 10” lists of blogs as well, so I went with this site thinking it would give me a pretty randomized list, just as good as any other.

I perused five blogs that I found interesting from this list: moneysavingmom.com, garfieldminusgarfield.net, yogadork.com, cavas-of-light.com, and calnewport.com. The one I found to be the best from this list was garfieldminusgarfield.net. This blog is exactly what it says in the title. It is strips of the Garfield comic, with Garfield taken out. It is basically Jon Arbuckle talking to himself. I thought it was the best because it was humorous, it takes an interesting person to come up with such an idea, and it was different from other blogs that I’ve come across. (http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/)

I think that what makes a quality blog to someone depends on the interests of that person. There are some individuals who can spend countless hours on blogs about video games, while others are reading about cats. I think that the quality comes from the amount of time an individual puts into the creation of the blog, the amount of multimedia use (e.g. video, images, etc.), and whether that individual has a strong understanding of who their audience is. By having this understanding, the author can use a tone that is received well based on the content, can read through comments to understand what is appealing to the audience and what is not working well, and make adjustments. I think that there is also a need for blog entries to be brief. Based on the content, an entrry can either be an informational post that provides a lot of backgound and content knowledge, or a quick snippet with links to other useful pieces of information. Again, it comes down to audience need and interest, but long posts are probably not well-received in a world where there is a strong desire for information to be short and sweet.

I think that the only issues that concern me about blogging are ensuring that the way I am being received by my audience is the way that I want to be received. Because blogs are public and accessible, it is necessary that the author not put anything online that they do not want others to see or know, or would incriminate them in some way in the future. There Is no way to ensure that even a private blog will never be accessed somehow by someone else, and so thoughtfulness in publication is critical.

I enjoy blogs, and I enjoy blogging because I love to process my thoughts in writing anyway. I think that with an understanding of my audience and my purpose, it will be a fun experience to blog for this course.