Classification of Blog

The booming of Blog as a phenomenon has actually reaches old and young generation. There are so many different type of Blogs globally but the most common one are personal, entertainment, politics, technology and fashion. Wikipedia (2010) classifies a Blog:

By Genre:

• Travel Blogs
• Political Blogs
• Education Blogs
• Project Blogs

By Media Type:

• Vlog (Video Log) : Blog consists of videos
• Linklog (Link Blog) : Blog consists of Link
• Sketchblog : it contains sketch inside
• Tumbleblog : Blog with mixed media types
• Photoblog : Blog that provides pictures

By Device:

• Moblog (Mobile Phone Blog): Blogs that is written from mobile devices, such as PDA

By Status of Publisher:

• Corporate Blog: It is for business purposes, it could be private.

Examples

Vlog

Linklog

Sketchblog

Tumbleblog

PhotoBlog

Moblog

Simons (2008) categorizes Blog as follow:

• Pampheleteering Blogs - Blogs for individual or groups of individual to argue about many different issues by putting their thoughts inside.
• Digest Blog - This type of Blog is providing guides or summaries about things that readers might want to excavate about certain things. It also provides commentary.
• Advocacy Blog - This Blog concerns more on a single topic and it is created by advocacy group or profit oriented organisations.
• Popular Mechanics Blog - Blogs that are created for hobbyist; for instance, photography, gardening. It is becoming a business blog because creator earns money from advertisement.
• Exhibition Blog - This Blog serve differently from others, the creator are mostly writer, artist, craft people. The purpose is to widen their audiences.
• Gatewatcher Blog - Blogs that are created by experts, it allows experts to show a particular acknowledgement.
• Diary Blog - This Blog is more to a personal Blog, it is meant to friends or family of an individual.
• Advertisement Blog - Blogs established by a company, it is more on advertise their products.
• News Blog - Blogs that is used to cover or even break about an important issues.

Simons herself owned a blog, her Blog could be classified as exhibition and gatewatcher Blog. She mentions that her taxonomy of Blog is not final because there are many types of Blog out there. Therefore, it leads to the difficulties in identifying unique types of Blog.

There are some difficulties in classifying the combination for blogs' styles; for instance, readers need to do some study for a certain Blog about identifying the types, style and its format. In fact, Vlog (Video Blog) provides a better understanding to readers by presenting videos in it. From my opinion, creator of a Blog should be able to classify their blogs for readers to simplify their reading process. Blogger would not write about which types of Blog that they are presenting; therefore, there are some cases about genre of Blog that overlap to one another.

Reference List

Simons, M 2008. Towards a taxonomy of blogs, viewed 16 April 2010, http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-o

Wikipedia 2010, 'Blog', viewed 14 April 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog