Tag Archives: Boyd

The comfort of Social Networking

Posted on February 27, 2011 by sl124894

“You’re basically standing on a soapbox and reading something out loud only with a blog it feels like there’s a big community square and everyone’s got a soapbox and they’re about the same height and everyone’s reading at the same time. So it’s a matter of people going and listening to one and oh, I don’t like what you’re saying and blogging with someone else and listening to what they’re saying until you happen to find someone who is saying something interesting or you happen to know where your friend is on his soapbox saying something”. -Jennifer

Blogging, just like many other social networking sites, gives people the ability to connect with others and talk to others about common interests. The quote from this weeks reading “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium” pretty much sums up the meaning behind social networking, people want to be heard and by putting their ideas on the internet they are potentially given the feedback or support they are looking for. This was also talked about in class last week, that it kind of feels good or is comforting when someone comments on something you posted on facebook or twitter. Seeing comments on posts give people the comfort that others are listening and that they also agree or relate to what you have to say.

Blogs are sometimes called online diaries which goes to show that blogs are made for people to express their feelings and ideas to an unbiased audience. By blogging about feelings and ideas people are given some kind of relief, and by knowing others are reading their posts people are given comfort. Bloggers are able to read comments and communicate back and forth to their readers and as a result create a network of people who share the same ideas that they do.

I guess it makes sense that people would use the internet to find others with same interests, considering you can connect with anyone in the world, but what ever happened to real human interaction? But I guess that blogs give people the ability to say things that would maybe be socially unacceptable in real life, like talking about how much  they love knitting, or talking solely about themselves.

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Blogs v Facebook

Posted on February 27, 2011 by gee.elle

“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?

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