Classification of Blogs

Blogs are generally very difficult to be put into their own categories. According to Qu, La Pietra and Poon (2009), the informal, capricious style of writing on blogs makes it difficult to accurately classify them. Simons’ (2008) categorization is too wide. One of these categories is pamphleteering blogs where an individual or many individuals come together to push a cause. The categories provided by Qu, La Pietra and Poon such as personal diary or politics may fall into this category as the content of a blog may be pushing a cause too. In Simons’ article, she has a category called ‘The Diary’ too, in which the blog is made for individuals who make postings about their everyday life and what not. However, this specific genre of blog may also fall into the category mentioned before which is Pamphleteering blog as individuals may post how they have worked for a cause for a day. Besides, Simons has come up with a new category known as the Advertisement Blog which is fairly hard to classify as bloggers blog about their personal lives or social commentaries yet have advertisements on their headers or the sides. The same can be said for News Blogs. Some New Blogs have advertisements on the sides or even after every posting made too. Specificity is key when classifying blogs. Smich (2010) has come up with ten different types of blogs. They are Cultural, Business, Personal, Topic, Collaborative, Science, Eclectic, Directory, Educational and Forum Blog. This is much more reliable.

Reference:

Simons, M 2008, ‘Towards a Taxonomy of Blogs’, viewed 29 September 2010, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>

Smich, M 2010, ‘Different Types of Blogs’, viewed 29 September 2010, <http://myhosting.com/blog/2010/04/types-blogs-2/>

Qu, H, La Pietra, A, Poon, S 2009, ‘Classifying Blogs using NLP: The Challenges and Pitfalls.’, viewed 28 September 2010, <http://www.hongqu.com/publications/Blog_Classification_NLP.pdf&rct=j&q=classifying%20blogs&ei=sf6hTPP_CYuGvAPV_5H-Aw&usg=AFQjCNG0vAGGMBb7PRYrYlRFbCXaW>