Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Blogs serve many needs for students

STANFORD, Calif. – Since the late 1990s, online journaling – also called “blogging” or “web logging” – has redefined the way people keep journals and record ideas.

As time passes, blogging has proven itself as a unique and innovative mode of communication. With its format of posts organized from most to least recent, blogs offer readers the ability to comment on and even discuss a variety of subjects, from everyday frustrations to breaking news scandals.

But blogging has been denounced by some as merely another way to spread gossip and melodrama among teens.

“I think online journals defeat the purpose of physically speaking to someone in a society where discussion is already a dying art,” says freshman Zach Nevin.

Technorati, a Web site that tracks thousands of blogs and links, begs to differ.

“Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a ‘conversation’ than to a library – which is how the Web has often been described in the past,” according to Technorati’s Web site, www.technorati.com.

For many, blogging is more than a simple online diary. Rather, it represents a revolutionary method of information sharing.

“A new Web log is created every 7.4 seconds,” according to Technorati’s site. “Bloggers – people who write Web logs – update their Web logs regularly. There are about 275,000 posts daily.”

People blog for a plethora of reasons.

“Over the summer, my sister was in India while I was in New Haven, Conn.,” says Stanford University freshman Emily Grewal. “It was too expensive to call every day, but we are really close and wanted to stay in touch, so we started a blog. It is a great way to give updates on the important events in your life.”

And freshman Tracy Chou says she blogs to procrastinate, to practice Chinese on her Chinese Xanga and to improve her writing skills.

Some also say they believe a blog can become an educational forum.

“While blogging is not well-respected now, I think it has the potential to grow into a robust avenue for [academic] information exchange,” says freshman Adam Cole.

“The stereotype is that blogging is only for personal use,” Wang says. “But most of my blogging is about aggregating information so that it’s easily accessible for people who are interested.”

Wang emphasizes key differences between blogging and regular Web sites.

“When presenting information, a lot of people build a Web site – [something that] is made once and rarely updated,” Wang says. “When you create a blog, you’re thinking about the future. You’re continuously updating in a straightforward, easy-to-navigate interface.”

Wang wrote a research paper on blogging for his program in writing and rhetoric class last year. Of course, he chose to create a blog – stanfordblogproject.blogspot.com – to present his information. His blog elucidates the potential of blogging in many areas, such as in classroom seminars and research projects, student government and student publishing groups.

For example, Wang notes that blogging encourages student participation by making it easy to respond and by showing students that their ideas are being recognized and heard. He adds that blogs welcome new ideas and feedback because they are online and removed from sometimes intimidating personal settings.

Blogging has already proven its mettle in the political field. It offers a fast, easily-accessible news source where writers are immediately held accountable for their ideas by avid readers.

This stands in contrast to mainstream media, where everything seems tainted by partisan bias and reader response plays a less-prominent role.

Wang says he endorses blog use in the political field.

“I would be really excited if all of our politicians had blogs of their own,” he comments. “It’s important to effectively communicate with constituents. Also, blogs are a great way to counteract the media bias towards sensationalism. I think it would encourage a deeper dialogue in politics than what we have today.”

The future possibilities of blogging seem endless despite its vocal critics.

“It’s important to for each person to find his or her own way to express themselves,” Wang says. “For me, it’s comforting to know I can put my thoughts down – with audio, video, and images – in a format I’ll want to look back on in a few years.”

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    Kirk MonkAug 17, 2010 at 10:19 am

    Almost everyone that earnsmoney on the internet (even the millionaires) do so through affiliate marketing. Being successful in affiliate marketing involves knowing the formula that makes other affiliate marketers successful. For instance, autoblogging. Autoblogging has been one of the least well-known forms of making money online for quite some time… particularly because it’s quite difficult to make a good auto-blog. Yet, when done right, it can provide you with a lifetime of passive income with the only real work required being the setting up process. Video Marketing, and several other marketing strategies are all designed to drive traffic to your site, can be incorporated steadily in order to raise the position your site appears in the search engine results page when any one searches for a term related to your site. And yet, even this can be totally automated.

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