Blogging Community

The emergence of blogs has eventually led to the formation of online/ blogging communities among the society today. Owyang (2007) defines online community as "a group of people with similar goals or interest connect and exchange information using web tools (blogs)"

As cited from White (2008), there are several tools that can be utilized in building blogging communities such as blogging platforms namely Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), feedreaders, tags, mashups, blogrolls and blog rings.

Blogging communities can be categorized into three types; One Blog Centric Community, Topic Centric Community and Boundaried Community.
For this post, I will further discuss on the first type of blogging community; Single Blog Centric Community.

The figure below briefly illustrates how the community is formed.

Image source: (The Knowledge Tree 2008)

Kennysia.com is an example of One Blog Centric Community from the local context.

Image source: (Kennysia.com 2011)

Kenny Sia, the owner of Kennysia.com is renowned in the blogging communities as an A-list blogger in Malaysia and Singapore under Nuffnang online advertising company. He attracts about 9,000-10,000 site views per day and earns around RM10,000-RM20,000 per month from the advertising revenue on his blog (William 2010).

Image source: (Kennysia.com 2011)

Kennysia.com allows readers to drop their comments in response to each post in the blog. Kenny Sia as the owner of the blog controls the power in the existing community ofKennysia.com readers; he sets the topics of the blogposts (Occasionally, his posts are advertorials written based on his advertising deals with clients of Nuffnang, the advertising company). Kenny also has the authority to filter the posted comments from his blog's readers by deleting those who are deemed as inappropriate or unfavorable.

In addition to the comment section, the site also provides sign ups and chatbox for fellow readers to interact with each other via online.

All these characteristics shown in Kennysia.com signifies the existence of One Blog Centric Community.

References:

Owyang, J 2007, Defining the term: "Online Community", Web Strategy,viewed 25th April 2011, available at "><http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/defining-the-term-community/>

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community, viewed 25th April 2011, available at <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>

William 2010, An Online Business Case Study, Kennysia.com, Online Business Malaysia, viewed 25th April 2011, available at, <http://onlinebusinessmalaysia.com/online-business-case-studies/an-online-business-case-study-kennysia-com/>