Non-traditional Blogging

Mike and Crysta

We didn’t think that neither the Cancer Survivors nor the Blogging Gone Bad were non-traditional. While they were different forms of blogging, we didn’t think that they were used in a whole new perspective.  We thought about people of Walmart and curatorail-type blogs but there are so many of those out there that they’re no longer non-traditional. Even fetish blogs are non-traditions because they’re centered around a central focus- which is what blogging usually is.

Nontraditional can only be defined by the user, which becomes super difficult when dealing with the whole world wide web.  Anything non-traditional would be a pitfall. Most people would try to avoid that kind of stuff, but we don’t see many non traditional blogs.

We thought about potentially having a “Pay-it-forward” type of blog. We’re not sure of how it would operate totally because it’s hard to monitor that, but if you could go on the blog and donate little gift cards to people it could track you to do a good deed.

Reading an Anonymous Blog

From a reader’s perspective, I take every anonymous blog/twitter account/anything on social media platforms with a grain of salt. I think it’s easier for people to post things online under the guise of anonymity and allows the user to speak more freely which can be a good thing or a REALLY bad thing.  I think being able to post on websites and contribute to the online community is wonderful and allows for a flourishing community, but in my experiences most of the anonymous users I’ve come across are either trolls or actively seeking to be an aggressive presence online.  That being said, I when I see that something is anonymous I usually tend to regard it as a joke. The best example for this would be twitter. There are TONS of anonymous twitter accounts but none of them really say anything substantial. It’s mostly accounts like “joke apple” that tweet corny dad jokes. There is the other side of that though. One young anonymous twitter user recently, “as a joke,” tweeted at American Airlines claiming she was a terrorist and that she was going to bomb a specific flight.  As expected, this user got into a lot of trouble, but her account blew up with notifications.  I’m sure if the user wasn’t anonymous she would never have tweeted such a statement, because after her identity came out she had a lot of issues with press.

I know that a lot of people find anonymous users funny and witty but I don’t really pay them any mind. I guess this could be hypocritical on my end because I did change my Facebook name during my job search. (It’s not back to my real name). I just feel that being anonymous facilitates negative commenting.

Live Blogging and People’s Perceptions

Live blogs could negatively impact or positively impact something that we are passionate about. The positive impacts consist of being able to keep up consistently with the event or source that we are passionate about at an instantaneous rate. Unfortunately, live blogging can be opinionated and due to its high frequency, it is unreliable and prone to factual lacks. This can change your perception of the thing that you are passionate about by giving you biased updates and possible misinformation. Another way that the existence of live blogging can hurt your perception of something your passionate about is by flooding you with unnecessary information that you do not care for on the matter. For example, if you are passionate about a music band for their music and you subscribe to a live blogging source thats about the topic, you might be informed about unimportant details about them constantly that will hurt your view of their music, which is what you were initially passionate about and what is being diminished by the irrelevant information on them. Live blogging comes with virtues and vices. Without live blogging, we would not be able to keep up with events such at the Oscars or Grammy’s the way we are today. If something extravagant happens in one of those events, then the world is informed about it and the information spreads like wildfire. This widens peoples perception on an event that they are interested in by keeping them at the forefront via instantaneous knowledge. But the widen perception maybe one through misinformation as it is not given that the information will be factually sound. Also, the information on an event that one is passionate about and that is being blogged live could also be opinionated and therefore could influence one’s perception on the matter by introducing them with a view that they were otherwise unfamiliar with, and now with the power of live blogs, is popularized within the masses. In other words, live blogging could influence the masses, and with effects similar to peer pressure, your views on the matter that you are passionate about could change.

Live Blogging

The short article “Research Reveals Popularity of Live Blogging” written by the Guardian highlights the growing popularity of live blogging in today’s information-hungry world.  The conventional online article is no longer the main news source; new surveys being conducted by the City University London on the subject have shown that live blogs are achieving an impressive 300% more views and 233% more visitors than the static conventional article.  Live blogs have even outshone picture galleries by over 200% more views.

Live blogging has become one of the fastest growing ways for gaining news information in today’s technological world. Instead of writing full articles on major news stories, live blogging publishes small tidbits of information as they come in. The researchers came to the conclusion that people are becoming more receptive to these small factoids because of their conversational nature. Live blogging allows for the reader to gain access to breaking news stories as soon as they happen. Major news sources like CNBC and BBC have even taken to twitter which has become one the major platforms to conduct these live blogging factoids that embed links to the organizations website.

I know that I’m the unpopular opinion, but I find live blogging very cumbersome. When I hear about something going on in the world I want to get as much factual information as possible without having to navigate a whole website for it. I’m still a big fan of the conventional news article because all the facts are checked, unlike live blogging. The nature of sending out speedy news bits is that not all of the information can be fact checked before it’s blasted to the public. I personally think that the constant stream of information, while nice to attain news in theory, has the underlying agenda of having people click continuously through an organizations website which would generate more views.

Though I’ve expressed mostly my negative opinion of live blogging, I do think that it is a great way for the reader to get their information initially. I would be lying if I said I didn’t follow major news sites on twitter and have CNN’s application downloaded to my phone. I like the initial contact of the breaking news because otherwise I’m sure I wouldn’t catch it. After that, however the constant ping of my phone gets a bit overwhelming. As I previously mentioned, I really like the idea of live blogging in theory, but it’s just not my cup of tea when trying to gain news information all at once.

Blogging Network

If I were given the option, I would definitely consider joining a blogging network.  Blogging networks are excellent because each blogger somewhat feeds off each other are able to collaborate.  They are able to share ideas or critiques with each other and develop a closer relationship. Blogging networks also offer a lot more traffic for any new bloggers who decide join them because readers may be attracted to the network by a more experienced blogger and somehow stumble upon a new bloggers post. If I were to join a blogging network it would most likely be a lifestyle blogging network like POPSUGAR. Lifestyle blogging gives a wider range of topics to cover and a blogger can touch on all of them at some point.

Blogging Network

If I were to join a blogging network, I would join the Food Bloggers Network which consists of various health and wellness blogs that deal with specialty diets and for travel. I really like the layout  The layout isn’t all that great, but there are some really wonderful blogs on this network that deal from everything regarding from limiting your GMO intake to how to eat in Sao Paulo when on vacation. It’s really a wide variety of people and bloggers and what’s really lovely is that they’re all different.  

After reading the articles we discussed in class, I think I would like to join a blogging network if I continued with this blog.  When you’re working in the kitchen, there is definitely room for experimentation, but you have to start from somewhere. People go back and forth with different recipes which I think is a great. 

How to Make Money Blogging

Blalock, Meghan. “How to Make Money Blogging.”StyleCaster. (2014): n. page. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. <http://www.stylecaster.com/how-to-make-money-blogging/&gt;.

 

This article is extremely helpful, not only because it was posted only a couple months ago, but because it gets down to the nitty gritty of what I want to explore in my paper, while also interviewing and gathering advice and tips from some of my very favorite fashion bloggers. This article also explains the worth of a few fashion blogs, which is actually based on the amount of unique page visitors, which I never knew before. The article also explains some of the other sides of fashion blogging, like how bloggers get all of those clothes, and what’s realistic or not regarding Fashion Week.

Mike and Crysta’s Startup: Computer Repair

Our startup business is a quick computer repair affiliated with the University you attend. We would have a little room or stand at the university, but we could also come to your home or dorm to service your laptop for you.  Our target audience would be students and faculty who have issues with their laptops.  We would hope to promote on the university website, but we would also have our own Facebook page.  On this page we would give daily tips on how to care for your laptop. We also know that sometimes it’s uncomfortable to have someone come in and work on your system, so on our Facebook page we would write little blurbs about our technicians. They will update you on what they’re working on currently.

We would mostly utilize the major social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. On Youtube we would post How-To tutorials on how to make minor fixes to your laptop so you wouldn’t necessarily have to come in to get help.  We would link some of these to Twitter and on the Twitter page we would have both our Youtube channel and our Facebook affiliations. It’s important to our business to use these outlets because students are more likely to use the Internet than to pick up a flyer in the campus center.

Our Social Media Policy would be:

• Act responsibly and ethically.
•  Protect yourself: don’t share too much about your personal life.
• Make sure people know that these are your opinions and that some people may have various opinions on how to handle similar issues.
• At the same time, though, be personable!
• Correct incorrect information on any social media sites in a timely manner.

Do Not:

• Don’t release financial or operational information including strategies, etc.
• Do not share legal information.
• Don’t talk about something you’ve learned at work.

Looking for a highly motivated individual passionate about computer repair and technology. They must be savvy with multiple social media outlets and use them to generate traffic for the company as well as blog about new and upcoming products for the buyers. Knowledge of blogging and community outreach is a must.

We uses the job description from this website as a kind of model for our job description for the Social Media Manager position.

 

What is Social Media?

Social media consists of anything website or host website on the Internet that uses it as a catalyst for promoting social interaction between individuals.  The most popular today are websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit; they allow the users to interact with people from all over the wold.  In my opinion, social media makes the world a much smaller place because not only are we able to express our own ideas, but others world-wide have the ability to join in on the conversations.

I definitely think blogging is a form of social media. Each blogger usually has a specific niche they’re writing about and by tagging are able to link their posts to a larger subject.  If a blogger likes what another blogger is posting about, they have the ability to follow each other and track new content that the fellow blogger is sharing.  And of course there is commenting! Like Facebook where you can comment on nearly anything if you’re friends with the person, the same goes for most host blog sites. If you follow someone, you can show support by commenting or liking a post that the blogger has created. This whole kind of interaction creates a virtual community which, I think, is the objective of social media as a whole.

 

Critique of RU Admissions Blog

The RU Admissions blog has to be one of the best places for prospective Rutgers students to read blog posts about campus life, New Brunswick, academics, and Rutgers in general all written by Rutgers University students.  This blog allows people to get a little sense of what it feels like to be a Rutgers student by exposing the good and the bad that each individual RU student experiences in their time at the university.  Rutgers University is extremely big and it is comforting for prospective students, as I was just a year ago, to be able to see the distinct aspects of life at Rutgers. The RU admissions blog provides an insider look to many different parts of what being a Rutgers University student actually is. The layout of the RU Admissions blog is fitting to what the content is about.  It is not extremely overwhelming or overdone, in fact it is simple and easy to navigate. One of the biggest unneeded distractions on the blog happens to be the Tag Cloud.  The tag cloud is filled with a million different, sometimes unneeded, words that may take away or frustrate people who are visiting the site. Also, the tag cloud drags down the page and messes with the layout creating a bunch of empty space since only five posts are seen in every page.  The tag cloud should be organized in a better way and only necessary words that would help a reader easily navigate to what they’re looking for when visiting the blog.  A great part of the blog also happens to be the archive. The archive is done simply and categorized by topic which is really helpful for people who visit the blog and are looking for posts about a specific topic.  Personally, I think this topic section should be incorporated within the homepage of the blog somewhere on the side before the tag cloud.  If the tag cloud is minimized to only contain important tagged words, then then specific topic section would fit perfectly within the layout chosen for the blog.  By having the topic section on the homepage, it would create an easier method for readers to navigate the blog. Also, i’m not 100% sure if this is only on my computer, but when clicking on a post it takes a while to load the entire layout. In all, the Rutgers admission blog is very useful for any prospective Rutgers students and the entire idea behind the blog and the individuals experience at Rutgers will definitely grab the attention of high school seniors/transfer students and let the see what Rutgers is really about through the eyes of past/current RU students.