doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Thursday April 13, 2006
Originally posted at my main site: life inchoate.
When I started my graduate degree, I knew I wanted work with blogs in some way. I think they are a great tool. I think that they are a wonderful way to share a bit of our selves with the outside world.
They are, too, a great way to reach out and engage others, to get feedback, to encourage healthy discourse, and to be able to connect with others.
As my studies have progressed and I’ve gotten more involved in my job, I’ve realized that what really interests me is social software. This is the software that connects us with others: IM, blogs, bulletin boards, wikis, podcasts, etc.
The key to all of this, though, is that we connect. We share. We talk. We comment, we critique, we get involved. It requires effort on both sides of the event for it to work properly. It is, afterall, social software.
I think this really hit me this morning as I was going through some blogs for some information. There are some great blogs out there that are getting little or no reader response. Why is that?
We write, post images, share information and want others to respond to us. But do we respond to them? Do we go out and look for new blogs that engage us? And if we do find them, do we participate? Are we active in creating that social network?
I know, I know. We’re all too busy, too stressed, too apathetic.
I think it’s important, though, that if we want to be a part of a community that we not only write in our own blogs but we comment in others. That is what keeps the community going.
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I hadn’t ever been to that site. It looks very similar to a few others I visit, though. :-)
I agree about the keywords on Xanga. However, I visit stand-alone blogs, blogs at livejournal, blogger, and various other places including xanga and I notice that good blogs are still not receiving the comments they deserve.
BTW, I always use links with the blank tag so that they will open in a new window. I don’t want to navigate people away from my site. :-)
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It’s a fascinating topic, and I could write more on it than warrants being put in your comment box. MANY years ago (as in, mid-90s) a friend and I did much research for a book about virtual communities, as they were starting to form on the Internet. Alas, Sherrie Turkle at MIT published “Life Behind the Screen” before we got organized enough. Blogs, in a sense (far more so than message boards) are the ultimate form of “social hypertext.” But blogs are more “rhizomatic” in their structure, growing like “roots” (links) and “tubers” (individual sites) from a point of origin; reading is less of a “random journey,” than a journey along a central “trunk” with side-trips out some branches.
Why do worthy blogs not get read? On this site, we lack searchable “keywords” to embed in our entries. But those are hard to use, in an enviroment mostly populated by under-21s. The other thing that would promote more reading would be to have all links to commenters on an entry open in a new window. I find interesting people, with interesting readers… but unless I deliberately use the “open link in new window” feature on MSIE, I lose track of where I started.
Speaking of social software and connecting, ever been to this site: http://www.zaadz.com ?