Blogging

I have been a "blogger" for about three months now. Since I have started this weblog, being the analyzer that I am, I have thought a lot about the different things associated with the "blog world". Some examples: weblog traffic, the types of blogs that people have, the comments that are left on mine and ones I leave on other's, the interaction with people that I have met solely through my blog, how the web (no pun intended) of blog connections starts with leaving a comment on another blog and other regular readers of that blog seeing your link and looking at your site...the list really goes on.

I have thought about it a lot lately because I know that I haven't been able to post as regularly due to work, and I know once my semester starts in a couple of weeks, my entries are probably going to be limited as well. It made me think about the regular readers, if they would get frustrated and just stop coming to visit my site...or not having interesting things for new people to read and thus not drawing any new readers.

I read a blog entry in a friend of mine's blog (denny burk...see article "Understanding Blogs") that was a short commentary about an article in another blog (USS Clueless). The latter of the two, though somewhat a little cocky in his article, had some good points.

One thing that the author, Steven Den Best, pointed out of interest, also what Denny comments on, is the types of bloggers. Steven categorizes all bloggers into two classes on a broad level of categorization ("informal portal" and "writers").

The first of these two classes simply adds some commentary to an existing article (see Number 2 Pencil for a great example), and puts it out there for people to read. The latter of these two will write about anything happening in the news, or life, or interact with other stuff that is written, etc...according to Steven, the second type of blogger creates something new, but that does not mean that links and such will not be involved.

As I analyzed his thoughts and my extensive blog reading over the past few months, I find that on a very basic level he is correct. I would go on to say that there are several other sub-categories and that it does not break the rules if a blog crosses those categories.

For instance, I feel that I would probably fall into the second category of Steven's classifications for the most part, but there are times when what I write is solely a short commentary on something else that has been written.

Breaking it down even further, I would say that the main subject matter of what I write about is not set in stone. Some of it is about current events, or my life, or exercise, etc...I would say, for the most part, this is true of all blogs.

Even though some weblogs begin for one reason or another, from what I have seen, I think that most blogs cross the lines back and forth when it comes to subject matter or the two classes that Steven points out.