Welcome to the Blogginghood

Our world is built upon layers of communities. It is inherent to the way we humans interact and socialize. Community gives us a sense of belonging and identity. So it is of no surprise the existence of a blogging community. There is no exact definition of what blogging community is. However, the word ‘community’ according to TheFreeDictionary (2010), means ‘a group of people having common interests’; ‘similarity or identity’. Owyang (2007) describes it as “Online communities are bodies of people joined together by a common interest”. Thus, we can deduce that a blogging community is where people interact and share the same interest in blogging and blogs.

A blogging community is created is when you have constant viewers. According to Wordiq (2010), constant commenters of a blog are described to be the blog’s community.
In order to get a blog to have constant commenters, it is important to have the blog recognized. This can be achieved by viewing other blogs of interest and leave a comment (eHow, 2010). By doing the former, it will eventually lead other viewers or bloggers to notice and follow your blog. Of course other methods would involve utilizing ‘tags’. Tags are brief description or labels to assist in searching for information (NZherald, 2006; Flickr, 2010).

An illustration of a blogging community is Jeff Ooi’s blog. In his blog, not only does he allows comment boxes for interaction but allows viewers to use social networking sites to such Facebook, a microblog; Twitter, a social news website; Digg and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These tools allow viewers to circulate and share his post. Consequently, this enlarges his 'community' of followers to his blog.


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Reference:

NikkiS n.d, How to build a blogging community, eHow, viewed 29 September 2010, <http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html>.

What are tags? 2006, New Zealand Herald, viewed 28 September 2010, <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/site-information-help/news/article.cfm?c_id=500827&objectid=10414474>.

What are tags? 2010, Flickr, viewed 28 September 2010, <http://www.flickr.com/help/tags/>.