Blogs as narratives have a unique format because of their structure. Unlike novels, the story of a blog isn’t told all at once. It is episodic. For readers to get the full story, they must read the entire blog post bypost. Each post is simply a fragment, but can offer the reader a view into the blogger’s personal life if the story is pieced together correctly. Rettberg discussed how some blogs have a very clear goal that is stated at the beginning of the creation of the blog. Some examples she discussed were dating blogs and dieting blogs. Each episode or blog post leaves the reader wanting to know what will happen next. The blogger’s struggles with weight or dating become the readers’ struggles and they began to form a connection with the blogger. Unfortunately for the readers, this connection ends when the blogger reaches their goal and ends the blog because he or she no longer has anything to blog about.
Sometimes bloggers who use blogs to tell their story become trapped in the persona that they created for the blog. Rettberg discussed how the author of a blog entitled Chronicles of Dr. Crazy felt limited because she couldn’t discuss her professional
life as much as she wanted, due to the concept of the blog that she had created online. She constantly had to carefully edit her posts. When a blogger feels contained in a space that was originally created for freedom, the end of the blog is near. Dr. Crazy ended up closing that blog and starting a new one where she would feel less constrained.
Dr. Crazy’s blog was a pseudonymous blog. She exposed part of herself, but not enough that anyone would be able to figure out her identity. She was using the blog for self-exploration. Rettberg writes that a reflection of ourselves is created in our blog. Pseudonymous bloggers will expose bits of their personality or crop pictures, only showing the reader what they want the reader to see. However, while Dr. Crazy was using a fake name to keep from being judged for her interests, some pseudonymous bloggers such as Kaycee Nicole create an entire new identity, usually drastically different from their own, as a sort of secret roleplay. The reasons behind this vary, but it seems clear that Kaycee Nicole was an effort for the blogger behind the name to get friends, feeling that her true identity or personality prevented this in some way. However, lonelygirl15's case shows that there are other reasons, such as a team of people experimenting with alternate forms of storytelling.
So far, this book has illustrated several uses for blogs: diary-style recountings of an individual's life, lists of interesting or relevant links, news blogs, a diary for a secretly fictional person, and even an acknowledged fictional diary as a form of storytelling. However, some people use their blogs as a way to make some extra cash or promote their own products. Dooce was presented earlier in the book as an example of a someone making money through advertising on their blog, but now we learn about referral fees, PayPerPost advertising, and spammer accounts. Some bloggers review products and get paid as the agent that referred a customer to the site. Spammer accounts leave links to the product or website being promoted, both in their blog and as comments on other blogs, as an effort to lead readers to the product/website or simply to up the popularity rating of the target site on search engines, which assume that more links means a better site. However, because search engines are becoming more efficient at sorting out spammed links from others, efforts such as PayPerPost, as the name suggests, pays bloggers for each post reviewing a specific product.
While some businesses pay bloggers for advertisement space, others write their own blogs in an effort to gain attention for their products, events, and company. Business blogs are a way for companies to establish, maintain, and grow relationships with their customers. They are also a way for companies to participate in conversations that are taking place online. Corporate blogs allow companies to bypass the traditional media outlets and speak directly to their consumers.
According to Rettberg, businesses try to maintain the personal character of blogs. Very large companies will sometimes try to have separate blogs for different topics, have employees take turns at contributing, or not have an official corporate blog at all, but just encourage their employees to create their own blogs to write about their career experience and interests. Many companies have guidelines for their employees who blog, but sometimes it is the company itself that acts dishonestly. Rettberg discussed the incident the Wal-Mart sponsored blog where neither the couple writing it nor the company sponsoring it disclosed that Wal-Mart was paying this couple to write about them. The lack of transparency shown by Wal-Mart showed the importance of establishing ethical guidelines for employees.
It seems likely that blogging will continue into the future, though the particular mechanisms are likely to change. People seem to enjoy participating in media and sharing their lives and opinions. It is likely that certain trends will continue - diversity is increasing, implicit data collection sites (such as Last.fm) are only beginning to be used to their full potential, and the customizations from search engines such as Google and Amazon are getting more and more accurate and useful.
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