The various spectrums of blogs prohibits it's very own uniqueness?

The seemingly uncontrollable vast expansion of blogs has given rise to two apparent segregations; notably by subject matter and by media type.

Segregation by subject matter would include topic-specific blogs such as political, fashion, war, news and religion (Smolkin 2004). These blogs are usually catered for pre-defined audiences who have similar interests and continue to be avid followers. Some topic-specific blogs such as political and religion oriented ones could be linked to the classification of advocacy blogs as specified by Simmons (2008). An example would be The People's Parliament, a political oriented blog pushing for the cause of justice and equality.

The other segregation comes in the form of media type and this includes splogs, vlogs, sketchlog and tumblelogs. Conventionally, vlogs, tumblelog and sketchlog rely on the power of visuals (image, videos and sketches) with restricted words. Splogs are blogs with fake contents aimed at search engine spamming and does not serve as a communications medium.

Screenshots
Vlog


Tumblelog


Sketchlog


Splog


Do segregations really exist?

Although these segregations exist theoretically, their distinctions are often blurred in reality. Some news oriented blogs may be inclined towards politics while some may be inclined towards war. Therefore, even topic-specific blogs tend to overlap with one another. Similarly, Simmons(2008) classified blogs as diaries but if taken as a whole, how would we classify blogs that incorporate both sketchlogs and diary entries as seen in Rob Sheridan’s blog?

Reference List:

Simmons, M. (2008), "A taxamony of blogs", ABC Transcript, viewed on November 12 2009,
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Smolkin, R. (2004), "The expanding blogsphere", American Journalism Review, Vol. 26, Iss. 2, pp. 23-25.

Bibliography

Li, B., Xu, S. & Zhang, J. 2007, "Enhancing clustering blog documents by utilizing author/reader comments", ACM Regional Conference Paper, New York.