Because blogs are an online creation therefore limited privacy are given to the bloggers. Majority of the blogs allows their readers to leave their opinion or messages on the issues that are discussed by the blogger. Readers are also allowed to leave their blog link on other’s blog, this helps to link one and another whereby it slowly creates their group of friends in the blogging community. However these days; it is harder to narrow the definition of the term-blog because it is still very much in flux.
It is very common to see various form of multimedia content such as digital videos, photo slides, mini audio in the blog entries; therefore it has become a threat towards the traditional print. Based on Walsh (2006) paper, he has mentioned the traditional print has now taken over by the online media.
The increase in online journal has started to catch the attention of political parties, business professionals, media and entertainment organizations, fashion and celebrity news, religious groups and etc. For example, Pink is the new blog by Trent from Detroit offers up to date gossips about Hollywood celebrities. The entries that are posted online are often quicker than the print magazines for example, Hello Magazine.
Due to the rapid changes in technology, advertising companies find that advertising on blogs is able to create an awareness within the public bout the product or event that is going on. This marketing strategy has benefited both the blogger and the company. Famous bloggers such as Xia Xue-a Singaporean blogger also known as Wendy Cheng, 21 is a full time blogger who earns only from blogging. Advertisers continue to pay her to advertise products and services on her blog, is because she have at least 10,000 readers per day! Pink is the new blog by Trent also earns extra cash by advertisements feature at the side bar of his blogs. In Malaysia, we do have famous bloggers such as Kinky Blue Fairy known as Joyce who works in the media field and blogs about the happenings in the fashion and media industry that are going on in Malaysia. She also gets paid by advertisement agency such as Advertlets and Nuffnags.
One of Xia Xue's advertisement post.
KinkyBlueFairy has advertisement posted on her side of her blog.
Now, we are able to see that how huge the blogging impact has on us and it has become very competitive. In order to keep up with the trend and remain the number of readers, bloggers need to create a better design webpage layout and yet keep it simple for easy reading. According to Nileson (2007) simple and plain layout will be able to provide a better understanding for the audiences is because readers tend to read slower on print media compared to online print.
Reference List:
ABC News, 2005, What is Blogging?, viewed on 24 October 2007,
< http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=889289&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 >
Joyce Wong, 2007, Kinky Blue Fairy, viewed on 24 October 2007, < http://www.kinkybluefairy.net/ >
Nielsen. J, 2007, Writing for the web, viewed on 24 October 2007,
< http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting >
Trent 2007, Pink is the new blog, viewed on 24 October 2007, < http://www.trent.blogspot.com/ >
Walsh, M 2006, ‘“Textual shift”, examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 29, No.1, pp. 24-37.
Xia Xue, Xiaxue.blogspot.com - Everyone's reading it, viewed on 24 October 2007, < http://www.xiaxue.blogspot.com/ >
