“What complicates analyses of blogs is that they are both the product of blogging and the medium through which the blogger produces their expressions. Blogs emerge because bloggers are blogging. And yet, what they are blogging to is the blog itself. Consider this in terms of another medium. Radio is a medium in which people express themselves, but the act of speaking to be broadcast is not radio-ing, nor is the product of speaking radio. Radio only exists when people’s speech is broadcast through radio waves. And yet, blogs are the bi-product of expression and the medium itself.”
I found this excerpt of Boyd’s “A Bloggers Blog” interesting in the way that it reflects language’s ability to adapt. Boyd states that “language is a medium” and that “mediums are also connected to and built on top of other mediums.” She indirectly supports this argument when she clarifies the terms blogging and blog, explaining how they are uniquely related. Blogs are built on the medium of language, and the term “blogging” was developed from the term “blog”. This reminded me of the way the term “facebooking” has come into the medium of language and is now a common verb in most people’s vocabularies.
But while both blogging and facebooking are common words in today’s vocabulary, both blogs and social networking services seem to serve different purposes. Blogs and social networking sites both serve the human need for acceptance and recognition (as we discussed in class), but Facebooking seems to have a more negative connotation than blogging. When most people think of blogging, they think of expressing one’s opinions or daily life. There is no negative or positive aspect to blogging. But when most people think of Facebooking, the connotation is negative. Facebooking suggests that someone is wasting their time checking their newsfeed every five minutes, creeping on someone else’s page, or constantly editing their profile. What’s strange to me is that both types of sites require the publication of private information, and in most cases, blogs are far more personal than Facebook profiles.
What does this suggest about the future of the internet? Will personal blogs continue to grow in number or will Facebook continue its domination over social media?
Also, to some degree, the development of Facebook and other social networking sites are based on the popularity of blogs. Why are social networking sites like Facebook far more common now than personal blogs? Do we prefer shorter, more concise status updates about generally trivial matters to the long, explained posts on different topics?
