Blogging Communities

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A community is a group of individuals that expresses their collective identities and share similar attributes, each community has its own boundaries and structure. A blogging community is a community where bloggers share what they blog about and contribute via comments and networking (White, 2006).

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There a several ways to create a blogging community. According to Darren Rowse (2008), these actions include:

1. Interaction with other bloggers on blogs (commenting, asking questions, answering questions)

2. Give readers something to do on your blog(s) or do a project they can participate in
3. Lead and be the example for your readers, or invite readers to do so
4. Link to reader’s blogs
5. Publicize reader’s weblogs

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Furthermore, e-facilitation and e-community specialist, Nancy White (2008) discusses the three types of blogging communities.

1) The Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

The writers of these blogs have full power and control over the topics and materials posted on these blogs, they can remove reader’s comments and censor materials from selected readers. This is because these blogs are the owned solely by the writer(s) or their organization. Readers of these blogs will get to know more about the blogger and their readers as well through comments.
Example: http://www.downes.ca/me/articles

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2) Central Connecting Topic Community
A network formation linked by a shared passion and topic and creates membership (community) through subject matters. As this network grows, it is likely that sub communities will be formed. These are separate blogs using different tools linked together through hyperlinks in blog rolls and blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds, trackback and comments.
Example: http://globalvoicesonline.org/

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3) Boundaried Communities

A single site or platform that hosts a collection of blogs. Readers are typically asked to register to join this community and are offered to create a blog after that. Bloggers can easily access other blogs within the communities and they link mostly within the community, this makes internal connections denser and faster, and also build communities.
Example: http://www.shareyourstory.org/

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With the understanding of these patterns of weblogs, we can strategically use it for further community development. They can be used in terms of their social architecture, technology/design, subject matter and other issues.

I will now discuss the structure of Malaysia's famous blogger, Kenny Sia’s blogging community.

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Kennysia.com is a one blog centric community, readers not only get know the author, Kenny Sia, but also other readers as well through commenting. The author has full control of what is written in his blog, he can choose to remove comments or censor materials from particular readers. However, readers can determine the topic on the blog if a influential relationship between reader and author is formed. Kenny Sia holds full power in his blogging community, therefore the community will be likely to shatter unless readers can find a link to each other. These kind of blogging communities can grow overtime, the amount of comments can turn out to be over-whelming. This community grows with the assistance of links from blog rolls, subscriptions and reader's networks.

References:

Rowse, D 2008, How to Build Community On Your Blog, as viewed 27th September, <http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/04/26/how-to-build-community-on-your-blog/>.

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community- Launching a New Paradigm for Online Community?, as viewed 27th September 2010, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Hampton, J 2004, Seven CommunityDefinitions, as viewed 30th September 2010, <http://www.community4me.com/comm_definitions.html>.