Monday, April 16, 2012

Blogging Community & How a Community is Built


     A blogging community is basically an online community that consists of and was created by a group of individuals with a shared purpose or meaning in which they express using web tools through a shared blogging platform. Blog communities bring together the individual blogger with other independent blogs of a number of people with a shared interest like an opinion, a view, a cause or something else (Kinkeldei, 2007). Bloggers establish communities when bloggers who share a common perspective create a blogging platform in which each individual blog is connected to each other, their ideas are shared and readers who share their views join their community in which expands their community.

     Nancy White, 2006 has established three types of blogging community models. They are the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community.

The Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community:
This blog community revolves around one blog which is owned by one owner or an organization; it is form as readers comment and gets to know not only the blogger but the community, supporters and their views. This community is based on a single blogging platform and on a single blog. The main idea for this model is that its success is dependent on the relationship between the content of the blog, the blogger and mainly, the readers. It relies on the central blogger’s control. This community grows as the number of supporters and readers increase with response through comments.

The Central Connecting Topic Community:
This blog community is a network formation; it is created between blogs connected by a shared interest or topic. The boundary is classified as the subject matter (domain) and membership (community). This community is formed by groups addressing a particular topic of interest. This community does not rely on a single blog alone, it has the potential to spread to other areas and create sub communities. In a sense, this model allows for free blogging in terms of topic and establishment of blog. There is no single platform but they are linked by hyperlink (blogrolls) by tagging, comments and others. These topic centric communities are built through blogs sharing a common topic.


The Boundaried Communities:
This blog community is a collection of blogs and readers on a single platform or site. People are allowed to register and become members of this community. Examples of these communities are social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace and so on. The control here is held by the owner of the platform who can impose any rule on the community. However individual members have control over their postings, social status and relationships, and tools that help the individual maintain social status and relationships.

     One such example for a community blog is Technorati link: http://technorati.com/, the model which can be applied to this blog is the Boundaried Communities as this community blog is a collection of blogs in a single platform. The community was built by individuals sharing information and expression. Individuals have to register become members of this community.




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