weblogs a primer

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weblogs a primer

• by mark brady

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What is a weblog?

• Blog, weblog, online diary, online journal

• Frequently updated Chronological order, most
  recent first
• Typically topic-oriented
• Forms the blogosphere
• Cross-modal
• Photoblogs
• Audioblogs
• Videoblogs
• Moblogs
• Usually hosted by a blog management
  service/application, e.g. Blogger, Movable Type,
  Typepad

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History of blogs

• Weblog first coined by Jorn Barger in 1997
• But existed in a recognisable form before this
• Originally used as methods of exploring the new
  web frontier
• Reported on new and exciting websites and
  information they found on their travels
• Vast majority published to their sites using
  manual coding of HTML and updating via FTP

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Amateurisation of publishing

• Blogging is the next step in the mass
  amateurisation of publishing
• 1st Letters published in local and national
  newspapers from public
• 2nd Internet those with technical savvy and
  internet access can reach wide audience
• 3rd Blogs high ubiquity of internet, very easy
  publishing mechanisms, e.g. Blogger, LiveJournal,
  Movable Type, Typepad, etc.

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Evolution of the Blog

• Three major changes to the blog have caused it to
  become what it is today
• None of these are 100 ubiquitous throughout the
  blogosphere still evolving!
• Minor changes causing big effects
• What are these changes?
• Permalinks
• Comments
• Trackback

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Permalinks

• Usually displayed at end of each post

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Permalinks (contd)

• Ability to point to specific posts, rather than a
  blog as a whole.
• Provides landscape for conversations
• Provides incentive for linking between
  blogs/posts
• Provides weblogs with a history
• No longer just whats on the front page
• Introduction of blog archives
• Introduction of memory
• Allow the next two blog components

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Comments

• Displayed at the end of each post

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Comments (contd)

• Increase immediacy of conversational element of
  blogs
• Viewable by all readers of a blog
• Allow users without blogs to join discussions
• Threaded Conversations, with posts as threads

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Trackback

• Displayed at the end of each post

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Trackback (contd)

• Allows a blogger to let another blogger know when
  you are referencing them
• Increases conversational element even more,
  building bridges
• Encourages links, and therefore social ties to
  enlarge and maintain your social network of blogs

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Almost every web user has been affected by blogs

• Even if youve never read a weblog, youve
  almost certainly been influenced by them as a
  Google user
• How?
• Through the search results that Google produces
  for you every day

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Googles Pagerank system links as currency
links to
A
B
pagerank
votes for
A
B
E
F
pagerank
C
D
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Google and Blogs

• Why is this relevant?

Well, blogs are all about links.
And Google loves links
So Google loves blogs!
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An Example Critical IP

• Well-known example of meme-spreading
• Matt Haughey started off hate campaign against
  Critical IP
• Uses a simple message Critical IP sucks,
  together with a URL to his post.
• Celebrity Blogosphere Status Popular Meme
  Fast and thorough propagation
• Bloggers read his post and added HTML code to
  their site

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An Example Critical IP (contd)

• Critical IP sucks post got a higher rating than
  Critical IP website in less than 48 hours!
• And theres still related items in a Critical
  IP Google search, more than 2 years on.
• Morals of the story?
• Dont piss off highly-linked bloggers
• Blogs can be very powerful!

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Small World Theory

• Small World Phenomenon (Milgram, 1967)
• Degrees of separation no. of steps to go half
  way round circle

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The Strength of Weak Ties

• Granovetter (1973)
• Weak ties provide the randomness in small world
  scenarios
• People have many weak ties
• Blogs are weak tie machines (Moore, 2004)
• Thanks to components like comments, trackback,
  etc.
• Blogs are accessible by everyone with internet
  access
• Ideas can be taken and distributed elsewhere, in
  other network clusters, via other blogs
• Provide a natural vetting process weak ties are
  voluntary
• Links as currency (in Google sense) links as
  social capital (in Putnam sense)

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Celebrity in the Blogosphere Power Laws

• Power Laws
• aka 80/20 Rule, Winner-takes-all
• 20 of the population hold 80 of the wealth
  (Pareto)
• Popularised recently by Shirky (2003)

No. of incoming links
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Celebrity in the Blogosphere Power Laws (contd)

• Unavoidable in social systems (Shirky, 2003)
• Tend to arise where lots of people are free to
  choose from lots of options
• Natural effect involving lots of people therefore
  very difficult to alter
• How do they affect the blogosphere?
• Over-voicing concerns affecting minor populations

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What is the blogosphere?

• Many blogs, linked together
• Large online social network based on a link
  economy
• Blogs as nodes, links as social ties and channels
  of social capital
• Difficult to get an actual number of blogs, but
  estimates go into millions
• Shows same patterns as other online and offline
  communities power laws

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Summary

• Blogs are
• the next step in the amateurisation of publishing
• still evolving
• social-software
• powerful
• weak-tie machines