Blogging + Microblogging: Summary

Lena's blogging+microblogging summary for book:

Blogging and Microblogging

What is it.

1. According to wikipedia, a weblog (also called blog) is a website with entries written in chronological order, usually reverse. Some blogs provide commentary on a particular subject, some are more personal diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, links and other media.
2. Blogs started spreading and evolving since approx. 1997. Today they are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream, affecting politics, culture, entertainment, businesses, corporate communications and blurring their limits with traditional media. Today there are more than 30 million blogs.
3. The minimum technical requirements to create and maintain a weblog have contributed to their popularity. The skill level needed to post basic entries on a blog is approximately the same that is needed to send email, and not previous knowledge of HTML is required.
4. The term “blogospehere” refers collectively to weblogs as a diverse social network. This network is supported by hypertext links and aggregation tools that establish relationships between weblogs. It is because of these links that messages are spread and sometimes massively disseminated.
5. The decentralized nature of the blogosphere allows some blogs to become prominent when others consider their content to be relevant, credible, high quality or noteworthy. Prominent bloggers, especially in politics, have acquired a significant role on the media landscape. On the blogosphere there are also awards and rankings that reinforce the meritocracy model for recognition. Bloggers often use promotion tools to become more relevant in search engines or in aggregators such as Technorati and Digg.
6. Bloggers are now facing new ethical issues related to their role as media and opinion leaders. There are also privacy issues in question, especially regarding young bloggers and the permanence of personal information that they're publishing on the web. Advertising in blogs and corporate blogging have also raised transparency and trust issues between bloggers and their audience.
7. The Pew Internet report on blogging shows that the blogging population in the United States is young, evenly split between women and men, and racially diverse. They are avid consumers and producers of information on the web, but only a relatively small group considers blogging a public endeavor or consider it to be journalism.
8. The ubiquity of low cost technology has enabled many variations of blogging: video blogs (blogs) are short video segments posted on the web with certain regularity, mobile blogs (moblogs) are messages posted from mobile devices such as mobile phones, smart phones and handheld computers, and digital photography blogs (photologs) also take advantage of digital cameras on mobile phones or regular digital cameras to post directly on the web.
9. Many weblogs are written on the style of a personal diary with the purpose of self expression and to share experiences. However over time, weblogs have expanded into many different writing styles. Political weblogs, for example, tend to have a more journalistic or editorial style. Other weblogs have developed a story based on real or fictional characters. Corporate weblogs tend to use a corporate communications style but they are also used to give a “face” to an organization and to create a more personal relationship with the public.
10. Microblogging is a form of blogging that allows the user to post short text updates via web browser, instant message, email or mobile text messaging. These short updates let others know of your “status” at the time. Main services for micro-blogging are Twitter and Jaiku, and the recently released Pownce that also integrates file sharing and event invitations.

Strategic approaches

- Blogs can be a valuable space to communicate with an online audience. They can be used to put a “human face” to respond and talk for your organization or campaign, and interact with the public on a personal level. To be effective, this human voice should be authentic, credible and transparent: it is not the same to post press releases using a corporate communications voice, than posting opinions and different points of view.

- Some organizations have found strategic to offer their users a platform to create their own blogs or collaborate in group blogs on the issues they care about. Creating a community weblog can provide a wealth of content, knowledge and engagement. However, collaborators need to obtain value from this relationship, and they have to be guaranteed a space for freedom and creativity. To offer a blogging platform, an organization should be prepared to provided training or orientation on how to use it, general user support, and security and privacy practices.

- Many bloggers are embracing open content and Creative Commons licenses, as an alternative to Copyright. The Internet has enabled and expanded the culture of content sharing, and it is important to understand the conditions in which this happens. There is very little control over content on the blogosphere. A model that allows users to copy, mix and reproduce content while retaining rights such as attribution is a good option to match the conditions in which information exists and transforms on the Internet.

- Blogs can offer an alternative view or coverage of an issue, event or campaign, and create an editorial voice for interested audiences. There are millions of blogs, many of them covering the same topics. Original voices and points of view have a better chance to stand out. Many issues that are not covered or not covered enough by the mainstream media could be highlighted and brought forward through a blog.

- Relevant blogs are part of a blogging community (geographical, thematic or demographic) that shares links, visitors and refers to each other's content. It's the community that brings traffic, relevance and access to audiences that get to a blog indirectly by reference. Participation in a community also entails time and involvement, and a constant monitoring and reading of other blogs.

- Microblogging is being used to post quick event updates for people who are not attending or that is following the event closely, and last minute developments on a protest, campaign or breaking news. Microblogging allows posting and receiving updates easily from mobile devices, it requires less reading from the audience and limits the formatting options to be lightweight and fast.

- Encourage self expression and sharing personal experiences through blogging. Get original content from your organization, your partners and members. Blogs are not only for news: incorporate life stories, interviews, best practices, how-tos and book reviews. Use multimedia such as audio, video, photography, illustration and animation if you have the resources.

- Use blogs to create international links and bring a global perspective on issues. Blogs can reach a global audience but they can also feed from many global perspectives on the issues. A blog can support a campaign or an informative effort abroad.

- Bloggers can be a part of a communications strategy. Bloggers can be invited, along with the press, to cover issues and campaigns. Many organizations are including bloggers in their press lists, inviting them to events and campaign launches, sending them their publications for review and directly inviting them to support their campaigns, either by endorsement or simply by posting a banner or a link on their blog.

Use cases

Taking IT Global http://www.takingitglobal.org/

- A youth lead organization that created an online community that today has 150 000 members. Their objective is to bring together young people from around the world to get informed on social change issues and take action.
- Their online community offers useful project management and communications tools, including member's weblogs. Blogs give TIG a constant stream of relevant content created by their young user base from around the world.
- They encourage their young members to express themselves not only by writing on their weblogs but also creating artwork and creating their own projects and groups.
- TIG develops specific actions to mobilize youth offline, tapping into the wealth of online content and resources. They have programs to connect their users with local communities, organizations and educational programs.
- User-created content and a strong membership base allows TIG to obtain relevant research data on best practices and the role of youth and ICTs in global action.

Global Voices http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/

- Global voices is a non-profit project that “seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online”. It is created by a team of volunteer authors, regional editors and translators. all bloggers from around the world.
- They focus on under-represented issues and sources and aim to bring attention to them using a variety of technology resources such as weblogs, photo, video, chat etc.
- Part of their work is identifying content, summarizing, giving context and sometimes translating it to English and other languages. Some of their bloggers are interviewed by mainstream media and become reliable sources.
- They have created a partnership with Reuters that is mutually beneficial in terms of content sharing. They are also exploring “how professional journalism should interact with the world of blogs and citizen media.”

Amnesty USA Blogs http://blogs.amnestyusa.org/

- One of the most recognized Human Rights organizations in the world. Traditionally used one way newsletters and email alerts to communicate with their members and subscribers.
- Using blogs as part of their communications strategy has allowed them to interact with the public and receive immediate feedback and comments, creating a conversation around the issues.
- They have become part of the larger blogosphere and by doing so, they have gained access to different audiences.
- They educate their members on how to blog about human rights issues and even encouraged others to start blogs, hoping to engage more activists into the conversation.

Future Majority http://www.futuremajority.com/

- Three political activists and bloggers started this collective blog to report on the progressive youth movement. They were all participants and collaborators in youth engaging initiatives such as Music for America and Howard Dean's political campaign in 2003.
- They aim to “create an online space that covers the activities of these organizations, supplements them with our own creative ideas”. To do so, they blog about the latest news and political developments with a youth perspective, but they also include reference material for youth engagement in politics and link to relevant organizations and campaigns.
- The site has slowly integrated other resources such as a MySpace account, Facebook account, a Youtube account and a Flickr account where they reach different networks and expose their content.
- They have started a wiki and with the help of their readers they are creating a collaborative guide to progressive youth organizing.

Technical overview
Key tech features and mechanisms

- Several web companies such as Blogger.com and TypePad allow you to create a weblog in their servers, by creating a user account. They offer different sets of features and customization options and terms of service.
- You can also choose to install a content management systems (CMS) in your own server. The most popular blogging CMSs are published under Free or Open Source software licenses and can be downloaded from the web. Popular choices include WordPress and Movable Type. Blogging tools are relatively easy to install and customize. Larger CMS such as Drupal and Joomla also include blogs.
- Every major blogging tool offers an intuitive interface for publishing text content and links. Some tools offer WYSIWYG panels and content preview.
- Blogging tools also offer other options such as document uploading, different ways to include images on posts, different privacy levels for posts and the ability to include tags or keywords and to publish a post under user-created categories. Some tools also offer the option to create static pages outside the chronological blog order.
- Key features on a blog tool allow you to create connections with other blogs and aggregators. Blogrolls allow you to manage dynamic lists of links, tagrolls allow you to display your content by keyword and even link to other weblogs with similar content (using del.icio.us for example). Trackbacks and pingbacks let you know when someone has referenced your content from another site, and ping features allow you to notify aggregators and search engines every time you update your content.
- Bllogging software and third party services (i.e. Youtube) can be used to display embedded media in your posts, such as audio and video files. Normally this will take pasting a small block of code into your post.
- Most blogging software automatically generates RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds for your posts and comments. Users can subscribe to your feeds using a feed reader such as Bloglines or the included feed reader in the Firefox browser. You can also customize how your feeds are displayed on the user's reader.
- Most CMSs work with a system of templates to control the weblog design and layout. Very often, a Cascade Style-Sheet (CSS) file controls the overall layout and style, and other template files are built with html code that includes “tags” that refer to specific content in the database. Free hosted weblogs tend to offer less flexibility in terms of design.
- Some blogging software gives you the option to grant different access levels to registered users, for example, you can have some users registered as authors or editors allowing them to post and edit content collectively. You can also create private entries or restrict access to your weblog altogether.

Getting started

- Set up a weblog, either hosted on a service such as Blogger.com or TypePad, or install a Blog CMS on your own web server space. To do this you may need to get a hosting provider, buy a domain name in order to have more control over your blog branding and features.

- Define a style and a scope for your content strategy. Decide what type of content you want to post and what are the topics you want to post about. For example, you could have a weblog to distribute your organization's news and press releases, or you could have an editorial weblog to comment and highlight the issues you work on from a different perspective. Some weblogs are based almost entirely on original content, others tend to post links and quotes found on the web and other blogs. You may want to define from the start if you're going to cover your topic on a local, national or global scale, or if you want to write for urban or rural populations. Make sure you dedicate some time to think about who you want to write for, and what is the language and format that is more attractive to them. Find if there are any blogs already covering your topic and identify your contribution to the community.

- Assign time and responsibilities for creating high quality content. Blogging takes time and although it requires little technical skills, creating high quality content requires good writing, confident Internet skills and careful editing. Original content, written with a good sense of humor and good style will attract new visitors and create loyalty from your regulars. Blog readers expect regularity on the updates: an abandoned blog quickly loses readership and relevance.

- Personalize your design and layout. Most blogging platforms offer default templates that can be modified to fit your basic needs. However, you may want to consider getting your weblog designed by a professional specially if you need your organizational branding, image or campaign graphics to be integrated into the weblog, or if you want to integrate your new weblog as a section of your website. Designing a template from scratch requires better knwoledge of CSS, HTML, tagging and sometimes PHP and Javascript, as well as a good knowledge of your blogging platform.

- Create linkrolls and tagrolls. Link to your allies, your networks and your supporters. Make sure you also link to other relevant websites and weblogs that your readership may find interesting. Don't be afraid of sending your readers to other sites: the blogosphere will send other visitors back to you over time. A linkroll can usually be managed from the administrative interface of the blogging software, which could also give you options on how to display it on your template. Tagrolls generate when you've tagged your entries with different keywords. These tags will accumulate over time and a tag roll allows your users to find information through that classification.

- Make sure your blog is on technorati and other major relevant sites. It is important that your content is indexed by search engines and listed on relevant directories and aggregators. Visitors will be able to find your content through external mechanisms and you will be able to account for your efforts on promoting and getting your blog linked.

- Track your statistics. Most hosting providers will tell you how to check on your global website statistics. You can also use external services such as Google Analytics. Statistics allow you not only to have an idea of how many people are visiting your blog and from what locations, but will also guide you on website design and content strategy. Statistics often show what keywords are users looking on your blog, what posts are more or less read, and what websites and search engines are directing traffic your way.

- Use RSS feeds. Most of the current blogging platforms generate RSS feeds (Real simple syndication) automatically, both for your posts and your comments. Meke sure your users can easily access your feeds. If you have time and skills, you can customize your feeds to show specific headlines, order, length etc. Services such as Bloglines and Google Reader will tell you how many of their users are subscribed to your blog.

- Explore other services that could complement your blog. For example, you could include your latest bookmarks or your tagcloud from del.idio.us, post your videos on youtube and embed them into your posts, show your latest Twitter updates in your blog, display your latest Flickr pictures, or show your public bloglines subscription list to your visitors.

- Perhaps the most important step to create a readership is to visit other weblogs on your subject area or geographical location, comment on their posts and become part of the bloggers community. Create links with others and refer to your content when appropriate. Don't abuse of self-promotion on other people's weblogs, just make interesting comments and visitors will be attracted to your own blog.

Looking forward

- Increasing need to define bloggers as media practitioners, with the guarantees of the law but also subject to ethics, transparency and quality standards.
- Multimedia content is increasingly being more and more prominent in blogs. The availability of broadband allows better integration of video, flash, audio into weblogs.
- Blogs are becoming sources of information for mainstream media to “pick up” stories or bringing them back to the spotlight.
- Open APIs are allowing multiple mash-ups and increasing integration of maps, photos, microblogging and the use of mobile devices.
- Blogs being integrated as a feature in larger social networking sites such as facebook and myspace, as well as a user feature in more issue-specific sites.