My Week as a Blogophile!

Before I sat down to write up my summary of this week’s voyeuristic exploits I read my latest e-mail from Dave Wiley. As recommended, I followed the link provided to read Russkoff’s comments on blogging. While I was reading, I realized that the blogs that I have followed this past week were greatly inferior to blogs such as Russkoff’s. Then I went on bloglines to read the posts of my fellow classmates to see the links to the blogs that others were reading. My horrors were confirmed. Somehow others, well…Murat, found blogs to view that were interesting and worthy of time spent. Yikes, wait ‘til you see where I’ve been.

The blogs that I read this week were created by amateurs; these are the links:
OfficeSmileMan
Meatball Fabulous
Diary of a Stay at Home Mum
Dr Finnerty
Carlos’ Realm

Similarities of Blogs:
Links, links and more links
Almost each blog has links that are both personal and political
Most of the blogs stated political viewpoints after the presidential debates
All of the blogs except one had pictures of a personal nature
Four of the five blogs posted emoticons daily
Three blogs had a writing style reminiscent of conversing with a family member while the other two were writing to the world

Differences of Blogs:
OfficeSmileMan – changed his template mid-way, has a category for each area of his life (work, home, play and photo album), photos are totally random and silly
Meatball Fabulous – host of blog comes across as very juvenile, however, person is old enough to have a 12 year old son, had pictures of tattoos, I found that I could change the design of the “skins” on her blog, once I changed the skin I found her site much more tolerable to view and much less juvenile
Diary of a Stay at Home Mum – daily picture of the weather where she lives, very personal and intimate, interesting link to a blog on Taxi Vignettes
Dr Finnerty - Not as interesting as I thought it would be, I thought would be the best of the five, but it was the most pretentious and boring, no profile information
Carlos’ Realm - Travels all over Europe, leaves pictorial journals, his Mom is currently visiting him and we get to see her on her vacation

My Reflections:
I think that Russkoff’s comments (below) are hardly applicable to blogs that are as informal as the ones that I visited.
“I believe that the most dangerous thing about blogs to the status quo is that so many of them exist for reasons other than to make money. A thriving community of people who are engaged for free, to me, have a certain authority that people doing things for money don't.”
When I viewed some of the blogs that Murat linked to, I could understand better the context of Russkoff’s post. I tend to relate his viewpoint to the recent Dan Rather “memo” issue, where it was the bloggers that identified the hoax of the memo. I think that it is a good thing that there are individuals out there who are intelligent and willing to post their viewpoints to the world with no monetary gain. However, at least in my experience, the majority of blogs are simple journals of everyday people with inane content that will most likely, not affect the status quo."

I found that blogs provide an avenue for anyone to post anything to the Internet, that blogging can be addicting, cathartic and informative, that bloggers feel the need to share information and are not afraid to incite a negative reaction and response. I was stunned at the amount of personal information and pictures that are posted and that people don’t flame the bloggers in their comments. However, I can see that with a good blog, like Stephen Downe’s, blogging and viewing blogs can be an engaging and worthy endeavor.

Time Spent this Week:
Forever…really, I searched and searched for worthy blogs. I need to find a better way to find good blogs. I would like Murat to post his blogging reconnaissance strategies.
10 Hours spent (at least)!