Blog Mania

In my search to improve my blogging abilities, I started to look around at other blogs, not only in this class, but around the web, and the blogs advised by our wise course lecturer. Well, turns out, there's the good , the bad and the ugly.

Not everyone is Perez Hilton, nor have the controversy, the sponsors and audience the blog is attracting. Here are some of the blogs I preferred:

Gawker: A huge amount of information, catchy sentences, mostly celebrity oriented, the blog is the 'in your face' type. Very organized in its display, it also attracts many comments and is participatory, which I think is extremely important. The information is light entertainment stories which would attract a professional audience looking for distractions in their break time as well as keeping in touch with celebrity gossip.

ValleyWag: Now this one is a first. A blog for geeks, certainly, since we're talking about the Silicon Valley here, but a gossip one. Who knew geeks liked gossip? So a very niche market, but a very successful one since most of these people made their money with internet, therefore will be looking for information and entertainment online. Good videos, good images, good content. Good stuff.

Slashfood: Actually made me hungry. It's lunch time people! Quite different in its display, it's got looottsss of sponsors and a very structured website, with links to 'tips of the day', 'celebrity chefs', 'past recipes', 'gift of the day'... etc. Very creative, it obviously displays a lot of yummy images and fewer videos. Targeted at a wide audience from young professionals to grandparents, the blog invites to easy cooking. Yum. 

Cinematical: Well, I'm a movie geek, probably caught that from living in Hollywood, so I guess it doesn't count. But still, galleries, trailers (I'm a trailer addict), interviews, features, reviews, headlines, cinema news. Everything you could possibly ask for in the film industry. I thought they could have gave an insight of industry news, but their 'the tops, the bests, and the mosts' kept me wanting more. Overall, very attractive, and I will certainly go back to check out the updates.

Overall, I found out that blogging is veryyyyy time consuming. It can be quite addictive too, just like Facebook and other social sites. And dangerous in the way that one can live in a virtual world rather than go out there and live their own real life. It is successful in the way that the web has an infinite possibility of audience and information. It is also a free way to express opinions to a global public. I believe it is certainly the future for journalism, hopefully including more participatory features and an interaction in between the journalist and audience rather than formal news. 

Perez Hilton is confronted by Vistoria Beckham. 

Video courtesy to Youtube. Image courtesy to Jezebel.