BlogDay08 on Cyber Sapiens
by ornit on 31/08/2008
As of the time of posting this blog there have been 7,529 blog reactions to BlogDay 2008, as cited on Technorati. My Blog Day selections are more about blogging demographics than about certain individual blogs. All are categories I look at in my documentary Cyber Sapiens, all are people whom I met or know from my own exploration of different themes of social media, and all are of bloggers whom I read and follow their blogs and the content they chose to share on different blogging platforms.
Digital Immigrants:
According to the Blogging Iceberg survey by Perseus “blogging is many things, yet the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life. It will be written very informally (often in “unicase”: long stretches of lowercase with ALL CAPS used for emphasis) with slang spellings, yet will not be as informal as instant messaging conversations (which are riddled with typos and abbreviations)”.
Millie Garfield started blogging after asking her son Steve Garfield what a blog was and he, in return, created one for her. Warm, fun and often funny, her frequent entries cover daily anecdotes, hobbies and interests and rich life experiences. Micro-blogging on Twitter is not unfamiliar to her as are such web acronyms as LOL, BTW and OMG, and at 83 years young Millie certainly defies the typical blogger’s profile.
Visionaries & Evangelists:
Chris Brogan, whom I met at one of Jeff Pulver’s social networking events, created his first blog as a two-columns Excel spreadsheet long before ready-made blogging templates where available. The cofounder of PodCamp, his blog is a practical “how to” guide which offers thorough advice alongside motivational inspiration for early adopters and novices alike.
Taking the conventional blog concept one step further, Seesmic founder and French, now American, serial entrepreneur Loic Le Meur says that traditional media – send messages, and blogs – start conversations. He also says that vlogs are tomorrow’s blogs.
His About section of his website reads: “I am blogging every day a video on loic.tv about (almost) everything I do as I start Seesmic, I also constantly post short thoughts to twitter and often my pictures on Flickr.” Or in the French edition aussi: “Vous pouvez me suivre tous les jours en vidéo sur loic.tv, plusieurs fois par jour en style SMS sur Twitter, je poste aussi mes photos sur flickr.”
Traditional media have been all along about communicating messages to the masses, lacking any mechanisms for feedback, dialog or interaction. Blogs were the first to offer a feedback, talkback, but left the interaction in the print environment. And while vlogs created a face-to-face familiarity and an opportunity to develop a dialog, Loic is turning Seesmic into a cozy virtual salon, where any one can drop by and drop in on a conversation or start a conversation in any language and any time zone or geographic locale.
Social Media for Social Change:
In her blog Media Awaken, Maria Thurell suggests that through the use of social media tools, her clients can facilitate collaboration, communication and community relations. A digital Native by age definition and a self described “undeniable dreamer and an advocate of social change,” she promotes, on her blog and in life-beyond-keyboard, social causes and social change such as the ongoing SM4SC campaign. In a recent post, she links to Beth Kanter’s blog, a BlogHer contributing editor who, on her own blog, discusses how nonprofits can use social media, and offers a compilation of Gen-Y bloggers who write about social change in their blogs
Women WWWloggers:
Speaking of BlogHer, a website for “women who blog” and following their slogan “You say it. We share it,” women bloggers have been doing just that all along. From Halley Suitt, who trail blazed the blogosphere since before it was even dubbed as such, to Cathy Brooks who describes herself as a “genetically engineered communicator who is fascinated by how technology is changing behavior” and whose frequent, daily Seesmic vlogging conversations like her personal blog posts offers witty commentary on most everything… other than that – there’s a long, respected list of women who make for about 56% of the blogosphere demographics.
Tech Talk:
From across the pond, Brit Phil Campbell, whom I met in podcampnyc2 and pcb3, introduces himself as a “web geek, street geek that likes to dabble with all things techy,” as well as film his “new daughter a lot because she rocks.” His me.dm (pronounced medium) blog cultivates his work projects as well as his web presence on a host of social media sites such as FriendFeed, YouTube, Twitter, Seesmic, Del.icio.us, Ning, to mention a few. Oh, and he “haz Pulver.tv in development” too.
ornit@tinro.com
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