C3 Demystified
May 20, 2005, NFB/ONF

Blogs: building communities, alone in your room...

Ed Hawco
Blog: https://www.blork.org/blorkblog/
Photoblog: https://www.blork.org/mondaymorning/
Or, just go to blork.org

History of Blogs

First Blog! Tim Berners-Lee ("Inventor" of the Web) had a Web site in 1992 in which he chronologically listed links to things he found online.
People have been making and updating lists of links since day 1.
Online Web forums emerged in 1995 — gave people the ability to "post to the Web" without requiring any Web development skills.
Mid-to-late 90s: a handful of people used tools they developed themselves to create Weblogs by posting through an online form instead of by editing an HTML page and "FTPing" it to the server.
Breakthrough! "Blogger" released in 1999: gave anyone (who signed up) the ability to create a Weblog (by now known as "blog") and to post to it through the Web-based Blogger tool. No special tech or coding knowledge required!
Now: blog tools and hosted services widely available.

Blogs did not come about through revolution, but through evolution. The big breakthrough came as a result of the tools: when Blogger made it easy to create and update a blog without requiring any Web page-coding skills or knowledge.

Definition(s) of "Blog"

Merriam-Webster:
Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999):
a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

Google (define:Blog)
At least 20 definitions...

Dave Winer:
Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there's also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.

Laurent Gloaguen [fr]
Laurent presents a colaborative definition – essentially a blog community defining itself.

Key Points from Laurent's Definition

...with translations and minor revisions by me.

Caractères essentiels

Essential Characteristics

1. Le blogue est un site Web. Évidence première, mais cela mérite d’être précisé.

1. A blog is a Web site. Obvious, but worth mentioning.

2. Un blogue est un site Web dont le lecteur attend une mise à jour plus ou moins fréquente. Le blogue n’est pas une forme statique de site, il est censé être régulièrement enrichi de nouveaux contenus.

2. A blog is a Web site whose reader expects (more or less) frequent updates. A blog is not a static site – new content is added regularly.

3. Un blogue est constitué d’unités de contenu appelées « entrées » ou, plus particulièrement pour les textes, « billets ». [Sur un blogue, il n’y a pas toujours corrélation entre le concept d’entrée et celui de page].

3. A blog consists of units of content called "entries" or "posts." The concepts of a "page" and of a "post" do not always correlate.

4. La page d’accueil du blogue présente, intégralement ou en extrait, l’entrée la plus récente. S’il y a plus d’une entrée présentée sur cette page, elles sont généralement ordonnées par ordre chronologique inverse (entrée la plus récente en tête de page).

4. The "home" or main entry page of the blog shows the most recent post. If there are multiple posts on the page, the most recent is usually at the top (reverse chronological order).

5. Les entrées sont datées, ou numérotées, ou possèdent tout autre repère de chronologie.

5. The posts are dated, or numbered, or have some other indicator of chronology.

6. Les entrées anciennes sont archivées, de façon unitaire (une entrée par page) ou réunies en une page, par catégorie (si le blogue en possède), ou en une page par période temporelle (souvent par mois). En cas d’archivage unitaire, des pages de sommaire par catégorie ou par période temporelle peuvent être proposées.

6. The older posts are filed in an archive, in a manner in which each can be retrieved via "permalink" or viewed in clusters, such as by week, or month, or (in some cases) category.

Different Types of Blogs

There are many different types and categories of blogs. The lists below represent one (my) view of some of the predominant types.

Personal journal / diary / commentary / "columnist-like" blogs

Theme-based & "expert" blogs

Photo blogs

Corporate/enterprise blogs

Randy's Journal (Boeing)
Smallblock Engine Blog (General Motors)
Jupiter Research Analyst Blogs

Web Sites vs. Blogs

A blog is a Web site, but a Web site is not necessarily a blog.

A Web site can have a blog as part of its Web site. Great example: Bookslut!

Building Communities

Communities of bloggers are like any other kind of community: groups of people who come together because of shared interests and curiosity about other, like-minded people.

A few generalizations:

Blog communities usually develop through natural social processes. People with shared interests and the desire and curiosity to meet each other will find each other. The communities are organic and loosely defined. People come and go as they please. Much depends on "give & take."

Forum communities (Cafe Utne, e-Gullet, etc.) are constructed. Someone creates the forum, others join by signing up. Forums are usually moderated, and members must abide by rules. Forums that develop a strong sense of community usually are "closed" (membership required). Successful forum communities develop a sense of committment and shared trust amoung the members.

There are other options — such as group blogs, social networking sites (e.g., Friendster, Orkut, etc.) and community blogs that are set up around a common theme (see CCN note, below).

In the "blogosphere," the keys to community building are:

Abundant use of hyperlinks. As people link to each other, networks emerge.
Intelligent and respectful commenting. People find each other by commenting on each other's blogs. Adage: honey gathers more flies than vinegar.
Make it personal. Web sites and blogs that simply broadcast from a corporation or a disembodied "brand" will not be effective in building communities. The blog must come from someone -- a person (or group of people) with a voice. They can be pseudonymous, but not anonymous.

Underlying elements: outreach and sharing.

How Do They Find Each Other?

Comments and trackbacks
Platform tools (e.g., Live Journal users have built-in tools for building links and communities among themselves.)
Web rings / blog rings
Geographic location: YULblog (Montreal), Seablogs (Seattle), NYCbloggers (NYC), GTAbloggers (Toronto), etc.
Special interest portals/communities: Photoblogs.org
Referrer logs (Site Meter, etc.)
Blog indexes and trackers (Blogdex, BlogsCanada, Blogwise, Technorati, etc.)
Non-blog web communities: Flickr, Cafe Utne, Meetup.com, various forums (e-Gullet, etc.) Blogging is not the only way to build online communities! Other options, such as forums, are worth considering.

Tools?

From "The Step Just Before Community" (a post on the blog of Lee Lefever, "Social Design Consultant"):

Community building is not about tools
Community building is not about tools like message boards and blogs. Community building is about people- about developing trust, relationships and emotional connections. Community is more tool-agnostic than you might think- if the people want to create a community, it will happen.

Tools facilitate community, they don't define it
The goal should not be to form the community around a tool, but to form a tool around the community. Success depends on appropriate matching of the two.

Social Design is the step before "Community"
Social Design is the process of creating the appropriate environment for community to develop.

Community Projects in the Blogosphere

Clark Community Network (CCN) "...a creation of Cameron Barrett and the Wesley Clark for President campaign. ...CCN provided a true two-way communication with Clark supporters and interested observers. Users were allocated their own blog space, with entries voted down or voted to the front page by other members of the community. CCN moved through creation to rollout and more than 5000 active users in less than six weeks. At its peak, the community helped drive the overall Web traffic of the Clark '04 site to well over 175,000 unique visitors a day." [src]
Our Media. "The Global Home for Grassroots Media."
YULzine. A blog-like group online 'zine thingy.
NowPublic. A News site in which members can log in, add stories and video, and edit existing stories.
BBC Creative Archive. A site that lets people "rip," mix, re-use, and redistribute BBC digital content. (Wired News story...)

Caractères essentiels	Essential Characteristics
1. Le blogue est un site Web. Évidence première, mais cela mérite d’être précisé.	1. A blog is a Web site. Obvious, but worth mentioning.
2. Un blogue est un site Web dont le lecteur attend une mise à jour plus ou moins fréquente. Le blogue n’est pas une forme statique de site, il est censé être régulièrement enrichi de nouveaux contenus.	2. A blog is a Web site whose reader expects (more or less) frequent updates. A blog is not a static site – new content is added regularly.
3. Un blogue est constitué d’unités de contenu appelées « entrées » ou, plus particulièrement pour les textes, « billets ». [Sur un blogue, il n’y a pas toujours corrélation entre le concept d’entrée et celui de page].	3. A blog consists of units of content called "entries" or "posts." The concepts of a "page" and of a "post" do not always correlate.
4. La page d’accueil du blogue présente, intégralement ou en extrait, l’entrée la plus récente. S’il y a plus d’une entrée présentée sur cette page, elles sont généralement ordonnées par ordre chronologique inverse (entrée la plus récente en tête de page).	4. The "home" or main entry page of the blog shows the most recent post. If there are multiple posts on the page, the most recent is usually at the top (reverse chronological order).
5. Les entrées sont datées, ou numérotées, ou possèdent tout autre repère de chronologie.	5. The posts are dated, or numbered, or have some other indicator of chronology.
6. Les entrées anciennes sont archivées, de façon unitaire (une entrée par page) ou réunies en une page, par catégorie (si le blogue en possède), ou en une page par période temporelle (souvent par mois). En cas d’archivage unitaire, des pages de sommaire par catégorie ou par période temporelle peuvent être proposées.	6. The older posts are filed in an archive, in a manner in which each can be retrieved via "permalink" or viewed in clusters, such as by week, or month, or (in some cases) category.