The Social Phenomenon

According to Lee (2006), Google is more than just a brand now as it is also could be used as a noun and verb. This statement is strengthened when Merriam-Webster gave recognition to the term (Ahrens, 2006). So the question is: how long until Merriam-Webster adds the word 'blog' to their lexicon?

Google's official logo (Source: http://www.google.com.my/)
If the word 'blog' were to join Google to become a colloquial or generic description, it is not very surprising because everyone is already using it as both a noun and verb. Blogs are becoming more and more popular by each passing day ever since the turn of the century. To quote from Jensen (2003), “The growing power of Weblogs, or "blogs," has hardly gone unnoticed.” The growing power of it certainly did not go unnoticed, as many Malaysians started to catch up with the trend of the century. In fact, it grew so big that the word 'blog' is chosen as the word of the year in 2004 (BBC News, 2004), signifying its huge influence on today's life. It is basically the new form of media publishing with all the multimodality available for it.

According to Walsh (2006), multimodal texts are texts which combine words and images with hyperlinks, animations and so on to attract the audience’s attention. In this case, blog is a multimodal text, where it could use other elements to enhance the webpage, especially with websites like Blogskins which allows bloggers to choose a variety of blog templates, hence making it easier to design for online. But I would not say designing for online is easier than designing for print. Although users might enjoy the sound and graphic on the Website, they usually come to the site for information (Reep, 2006).

But what is a blog? What is the purpose of having a blog? While I blog to share my opinions regarding certain media and publishing issues, other people blog for their own purposes. Some may use blogs as a diary or journal to write about their daily lives, while some may use it to voice their political views. According to Sabahan.com (2007), 28 per cent of the 50 top bloggers in Malaysia blog about personal experiences in their daily lives while 16 per cent of them blog about politics and technology respectively. Examples of notable bloggers in Malaysia would be Jeff Ooi, who blogs about his political views, and Paul Tan, who blogs about the automotive industry.

Jeff Ooi (Source:http://flickr.com)
While each and every blogger has their own reasons and purposes of blogging, it is not impossible to classify them. The bloggers can be categorized by:

• Media type – classification based on the media they are presenting such as vlog (videos), photoblog (photos) and sketchblog (sketches)
  
• Genre – classification based on the issues they are presenting such as politics, humors, travels and personal
  
• Device – classification based on the type of device they used to present such as mobile phones, PDAs and computers

Different bloggers can be classified to different categories and types because they share the common interests or purpose of blogging. And normally, they will form a blogging community out of that shared values. Examples of blogging communities would be Project Petaling Street and Bloglah.org, two prominent blogging communities in Malaysia which collects Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds from blogs in Malaysia to boost the bloggers’ blogs traffic. Other blogging communities such as Advertlets and Nuffnang are blog advertising community, where they help bloggers to earn money through blogging.

Nuffnang's official logo (Source: http://nuffnang.com.my/)
Hence, it is without a shadow of doubt that blogging is the current phenomenon, and it is unlikely to change for some time.



REFERENCES:

Ahrens, F 2006, goo•gle (goo'-gul), viewed 3 October, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070601815.html

BBC News 2004, 'Blog' picked as word of the year, viewed 2 October 2007,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4059291.stm>

Jensen, M 2003, Emerging alternatives: a brief history of weblogs, Columbia Journalism Review, viewed 27 October 2007, <http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2003/5/blog-jensen.asp>

Lee, E 2006, Google - verb, noun or trademark?, viewed 2 October 2007,
http://bloggingmebloggingyou.wordpress.com/2006/08/10/google-verb-noun-or-trademark/

Reep, DC 2006, Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, NY

Sabahan.com 2007, 50 most influential blogs in malaysia, viewed 1 October 2007,
http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

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