M Blog

After I read Scboles “rules” for blogs I went onto the “Blogs I’m Watching” and looked at an article on Jezebel about a woman who claims after she had sex for the first time, she was reborn and again a virgin later on. I think that some of the things in the article that lived up to Scoble’s rules were that, I’m pretty sure it told the truth because in the article it said, “She had sex for the first time when she was 16, but always felt guilty” (Jezebel). I think that if they weren’t telling the truth they would have left out the part that she was so young when she actually lost her virginity. They definitely used a human voice throughout the article, their wording was simple and interesting and definitely down to earth, making it easy for almost any reader to understand. I think some things that the blog didn’t have was that they never lie, I think that in this particular blog post they didn’t lie, but whose to say that Jezebel has never actually lied in any of their articles. I also think that they might have hid information in this article, I feel like it was very vague and there was definitely more to the story than they actually let us here, I think the blog would have been better if we maybe got more details. I think that these principles of the Corporate Weblog Manifesto are applicable to the blogs that you look at. I think that some things could be changed because they seem a little extreme, but for the most part everything works out good, and is a good way to decide if the blog is good or not.

 In addition to reading Joi Ito’s interview called, “Japanese Blogger Champions Internet Democracy” I learned a lot more about blogs and how bloggers think about them. For instance, Joi Ito was asked basically why he blogs, and what his blog serves for people he responded saying, “My blog serves a couple of different functions. I write about anything of interest” (Ito, 144). Despite the fact that he is a very successful man and has done great things in the blog world, he still likes to blog for fun and talk about whatever he wants, this definitely interested me and shocked me as well. To put it bluntly, Ito doesn’t care about his success on some of his blogs, he would just rather blog about whatever, and have people respond and talk in “a community”. Also he thinks that the internet is going to be opened up to many other options because of this, which I agree with, but he also believes that people, are going to think of more ways to criticize the internet and blogs. For example, Ito claims. “On the one hand, there will be people who say that we must keep it open, but I can easily imagine that there will be arguments soon, if there aren’t already, that the Internet assists terrorism and assists pirates and is just a bad thing” (Ito, 147). Nonetheless, people can think what they want but I agree 100% with Joi Ito that blogging is a great thing and that the internet is also a great thing and basically that blogging for fun is something everyone should learn to do and get the hang of. Furthermore, after reading this interview I got a better understanding about the blogging world.

Personally I believe that the impact of blogging on business has a way better outcome and meaning than blogging on communication. Sure, some may argue that blogging on communication gives people a voice and they are able to communicate with people from other places, and still stay in their homes. Blogging on business gives businesses chances to talk about what they have to offer, save their business, etc. I think that by having blogs on businesses people are more apt to find what they want, and companies will make more money, its as simple as that.  “Blogs are a phenomenon that you can’t ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite” (Baker & Green, 222). This quote says it all, businesses are way more effective in the blogosphere, and if your business doesn’t have one you should because personally, you will gain more business by doing so. More and more businesses are getting involved in the blog world, and if others are not, they are quickly going to be left behind. Like Baker and Green said, businesses basically don’t have a choice, if they don’t have a blog they will eventually be left behind and lose business to businesses that do.

I went onto Jezebel  and found a very funny post called “Homecoming Queen Gives new Meaning to the Term, “Trailor Trash”.  (http://jezebel.com/357560/homecoming-queen-gives-new-meaning-to-term-trailer-trash) I found this post very amusing and couldn’t believe that something like this would actually even happen. It basically talks about this woman who was once a homecoming queen is now in jail because she got really drunk and ripped her sister’s prosthetic leg off and beat her with it.  In the article it said, “Donna has a reputation in her town of North Huntington, PA for being a rowdy, violent drunk. She’s been arrested over a half-dozen times since 1991, and one of those times — a DUI — she was so drunk that she smeared her feces in the back of a police car” (slut machine, jezebel). The whole article just talks about how outrageous this woman Donna is and how her life has basically gone down the drain since she won homecoming queen. I found this article very amusing and almost sad, that someone could be this messed up. The post was well written and very humorous.  I enjoyed reading it and laughing the whole time.  This writer did a good job on writing this article and making it very interesting and funny to her readers.

The blog I chose to talk about is called “RConversation” .  It is basically is a political blog and talks about issues in our world today.  A lot of the columns are about China and Asia related issues.  I think this blog looks kind of boring, although it is very interesting. It is mostly text down the middle, and on the side there are smaller pictures of articles. Also at the end there are some YouTube videos.  The colors are very bland just your regular black, white and red for the most part. It wasn’t really fancy, it just made it’s point and said what it has to say and that’s about it. Rebecca MacKinnon blogs on this page a lot along with other bloggers such as, Michael Geist and Paul Kane. The style of writing is very easy to understand, mostly blogging and open talk, but some of them are more “newspaper” style and like an actually newspaper article. The majority of blogs on the page are political blogs about different issues going on in our world. I kind of believe that the blog itself agrees with what MacKinnon said it would be like in the book. She basically said she quit her job as a news reporter to blog and that she wanted to report her own news on the issues in Asia and places she was familiar with, yet they wouldn’t let her. So instead, like she wanted to she started a blog where she could do exactly that. I think this is true, because many of the blogs on the site are in fact about issues in different places in Asia, etc.  Of course, many will probably disagree with this assertion that MacKinnon didn’t explain her blog in the book, “Making Global Voice Heard”, exactly the way it is laid out on the internet.

I chose to write about the Ayelet Waldman interview.  I thought this was a very deep reading and I felt confused about the article because I agreed with some of her points yet, didn’t with others.  In one of first pages she writes,

The blogosphere has become a way for women to experience a social community that I think has been really rejuvenating, particularly for women that are not working or are not working full time (Waldman, 309).

I agree with this quote that blogs are a way of life for women to experience social community and it does them good.  I know this because my experience of studying women’s rights and classes about women confirms it. I believe that she is right and that blogging helps women open up and they are able to express their feelings more openly online than in the real life. It also gives women who are stay at home moms time to become social with other people who are maybe feeling the same way as they are.

One thing I didn’t agree with at all in Waldman’s interview was that she claims that the majority of the time people blog about something that angers them or makes them really happy. Waldman claims, “When you blog, you blog about what outrages you or what moves you enough to write. It’s more often negative than it is positive” (Waldman, 311).  I think Waldman is mistaken because she overlooks that not everyone blogs online to be negative, people blog about things that interests them, things that they have purchased and to help people. Most of the time people just blog about their lives to do something. I definitely think that she is wrong, and that blogs aren’t always going to be negative, or about something negative.

After reading Waldman’s article it interested me a lot more about women blogging and how blogs have helped inspire many women to get a voice in society, it also interested me to find out how many blogs are actually negative, opposed to positive.

I think that is great for kids to be able to go online and express themselves online without being bombarded by their parents. Sure, parents are always going to worry and wonder if their kids are putting themselves out their too much on the internet, and getting themselves into trouble, but parents worry about that kind of stuff in general anyways. Kids aren’t always doing the wrong thing, and most of the time they know exactly how little or how much information they should give out online. I think that by things such as: Live Journal, blogs, and AIM etc, kids get the privacy from their parents, yet the freedom and the voice that they didn’t think they had in real life.  Not only do most parents believe that their kids could be in danger, but they also feel that its invading their privacy and they shouldn’t put so much out to people they don’t know.  Just like Emily Nussbaum writes in her article, “My So-Called Blog,” she says,

“For many in the generation that has grown up online, the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it: to stop worrying and learn to love the web” (Nussbaum, 351).

I think this quote is good, because it shows how many parents are scared of the web and the influence it has on their children, but not to fight it because the web is not a bad thing, it is full of information and good things for your children.  Sure, there is your usual trash talking, and lies and some danger on the web, but parents need to let go of all the bad things and also think about the good things that the web does for their kids. Parents shouldn’t monitor everything that their middle-school child is doing online. If think they should monitor some things if they think something is wrong, but they should be willing to give their middle-school child the privacy that they want, and that they deserve.

After doing some informal research I was able to figure out what types of social computing I liked best, what types of marginalized groups interested me the most, and also what geographical areas I was most interested in. I decided that out of the many social computing categories, I was most interested by: texting, instant messaging, and email. I knew I would have picked those in the first place because I enjoy talking online and gossiping with friends! Texting and instant messaging I use the majority of my time and find them very useful in the real world today. Millions of people use texting and instant messaging to get instant communication with almost anyone! Email is very interesting to me as well, now we don’t have to sit down and write out long letters and mail them to friends; we can sit on the computer and type quickly to people and send it for free. These are great technological advances! I thought that out of all the marginalized groups I was most interested in: older people, women, and children. I picked these because I think that older people are very interesting and they hold a lot of knowledge and we could learn a lot from them. I picked children, because like older people, we have a lot to know from them and it is great to watch them grow and learn. With education being the way it is now, children are a big deal and a great success to our future. Lastly, I chose women because I am in a women’s studies program and have been focusing a lot on the oppression of women and it has interested me deeply. They are focused on greatly on trying to still gain their full equality with men; these three things completely interested me. Africa has always been a place that interests me, last semester I took a course about it and learned so much about this great place. The Middle East I thought was interesting because of the war we have going on and how much disaster and turmoil is going on. Lastly, I chose the US because I think the US is a great place to live, yet I haven’t even seen the majority of it, and would love to travel across the country and learn more about my own country. I believe these are all great and interesting places/things.

After reading Kline’s “I blog, Therefore I am” I found that I agreed with almost everything he was saying and found it pretty much interesting, but there was one thing I didn’t agree with.  The last paragraph in the last page of reading I did not agree with. It states, “What the world is coming to, of course, is what we were always taught it was supposed to be in the first place-a democratic society in which everyone has a voice and the change to get a hearing for his or her views. Not that every voice would be smart, or right, or even polite.  Not that every voice would be truthful or used for positive purposes. Just that we would all have a voice.  The only difference now is that everyone has finally gotten one.  And you can thank blogging for that” (Kline, p.251-252).  Kline argues that because of blogs everyone now has a voice, I completely disagree, I do not deny that I think blogs are a great thing, but not everyone uses them, nor does everyone need one to have a voice to speak up for themselves. I believe, like Kline that blogs do give some people a voice that they don’t normally have out in public, but I do disagree that because of blogs everyone who didn’t have a voice now has one and can speak up for themselves online. I can’t bring myself to agree with this paragraph at all because I think that if we were to say that blogs bring out the inner voice in people, then so does: AOL Instant Messenger, or email etc, not just blogs. This reading from Kline was a great and interesting read and the majority of it like I said before, I agree with completely, but the last line totally threw me off and made me question some things about the rest of the reading.

After reading Kline & Burnstein’s, “The Voice of the Customer” I found something very interesting. They talked about how blogging can basically make or break a company or a person.  One very interesting person that this happened to that sparked my attention was “Danger Mouse”. This man was a hip-hop rapper and probably wouldn’t have made it very far without being in the blogosphere. He became a huge hit almost overnight before of bloggers, I found this amazing that blogs can do something as extreme as that.  He was mentioned on page 107.  I looked him up on Wikipedia and found out a lot about him.  I found out that his real name is actually, Brian Burton.  He was born in White Plains, New York and has always been interested in music. After he became a hit in the blog world, he made an album called the “Grey Album” that took the Beatles’ “White Album” and remixed it with Jay-Z’s “Black Album” and it became a huge hit. He has traveled all over the world touring with groups such as: the Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley, the Black Keys and many more. I decided to talk about him because I thought that his “overnight celebrity” fame because of blogs was so interesting and amazing. I think that blogs are a great thing and clearly have a huge amount of power if they can help make or break a performing artist. Just by reading about “Danger Mouse” it makes me realize just how much blogs can do to help people all over the world!  This is definitely a great blog success story!