Classification of blogs

Technorati tracked over 70 million of weblogs back in 2007 and it mentioned in their State of The Blogosphere 2009 report that bloggers are now blogging more than ever. All of these blogs cover a variety of topic discussed from politic to daily lifestyle. Hence, it is essential to classify blogs into different category so that blogs readers have a clear vision on which blogs to refer to. However, classifying them is a not as easy as it seems to be. According to Simons (2008), he classified blogs into 9 different categories as follows;

• Pamphleteering blogs
• Digest blogs
• Advocacy blogs
• Popular Mechanics blogs
• Exhibition blogs
• Gatewatcher blogs
• Diary 
• Advertisement
• News blogs

(for more information of  Simons' classification of blogs, read here)

Blogs are not limited to word-based only. There are other medium of blogs exist now such as video blogs (YouTube), sketch blogs (Deviantart) and photo blogs (Photobucket). Not to forget about the emergence of blogs that combine multiple styles and subjects together at one time. However, this kind of blogs create troublesome for us when it comes to searching for the right blogs for the right information. Fear not, as Reep (2006) mentioned that design feature of a document can guide us to the information that we want. She mentioned that design features such as graphic aids provide readers with quick access to information.

As for me, I would look at the topics of the blog as a way to classify the blogs. To be clearer, when you visit a blog which most entries related to personal lifestyle or feeling, based on Simons' taxonomy of blogs, you can easily classify the blog as diary.

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References

Reep, DC 2006, 'Document design', in Technical Writing, 6th ed, Pearson/Longman, New York, pp133-172.

Simons, M 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, Australian Policy Online, viewed 28 September 2010, from <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>