The Audience

Who is/are the audience of blogs? I was thinking this question few weeks ago. The reason is that I read one of my friend’s blogs about economics. Suddenly there is a big question mark in my mind and one sentence came out. MY BLOG MIGHT NEVER APPEAR THIS TOPIC! After barnstorming, I divided blogs as two different contents.

Write blogs for yourself, as a diary.

Write blogs for everybody, as journalism.

In my case, I am the one who write blogs for myself. Most of time, I talk to my self in my blogs. Just like writing diary. However, most of the audience of my blogs are my friends. Even through my blogs are for myself, my friend can know my feeling and my experience through my writing. My blogs are like an open diary, which is okay to be seen. But of course they won't understand all the time, sometimes they don't even understand one sentence in an entry. I feel free to write anything in my blog, usually only express my feeling in few sentences. As a result, it's a bit strange for me to write those entries here honestly.

In my little personal survey, most people write blogs for everybody. Even some of them are not really write for everybody, the way they write in blogs is like a journalist. Some of them already considered themselves as a journalist. Those people's blogs are usually longer and more readable then mine. Jane B. Singer (2005) in Use of Blogs indicated that respected blogger is someone who regularly and passionately posts to provide further insight into current news issues to an extended network. [Now I know the reason of why are my blogs is not popular. Certainly, blog has become a new media. However, blog has some features which are different from other media.

So what are the differences between blog and other media? My answer is: the respondence of audience. Through the World Wide Web, once a blog is posted, it can be viewed all over the world. And audience from everywhere give comments immediately through few clicks on a mouse and typing on a keyboard. Blog is a fast interactive media. Audience don't need to post a mail or use phone call. Author might possibly get respondence within few second. Blog, comparing to other media, save a lot of time and money to spread news, information, or point of view.