This is entirely off topic of what our assignment sheet is saying, but I thought this was pretty interesting and random that I came across this article.
I found a magazine on the newspaper racks in the union. The magazine is called Young Money. Inside was an article by a technology editor, Dave Matthews, called "Beginner's Guide to Blogging." It was very brief, but discussed a couple key points. First of all, Matthews says that blogs are a good idea because they may one day be able to make you money. He brought this point up a few times, but never really expanded upon it.
He is also a big hater of MySpace and Facebook. He says, "If you are one of the millions of college students graduation this spring with MySpace of Facebook accounts loaded with so-called "friends" and message board entries, it may be time for you to grow up to a real blog."
I think this comment is a bit harsh, but I see his point. He talks about being able to make blogs private or public and being able to add photos. You can do all of these things of Facebook as well. I am not personally experienced with MySpace, so I can't comment on that. One of his main defenses is that blogs are easy to access. He says "can you imagine your grandmother signing up for a MySpace page, just so she can access your photos?" I think he soon realized that was a silly point to make because he mentioned that you probably wouldn't want your grandmother to see those photos anyway.
Lastly, the author offers some blogging quick tips. Here is what he has to say.
*Post regularly or readers won't keep coming back to your blog
*Leave comments on other's blogs, to drive more traffic links
*Make sure the comments are smart and not seen as spam
*Use a photo with each entry since a picture is worth a million words!
*Link to your friends on the sidebar to gain traffic
*Sign up for Google Ad Words to make some money from your blog traffic hat your expertise area is.
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1 comment:
Oooh. Now I'm angry. I love it.
I hate MySpace because it's a giant ugly beast full of losers, sluts, and very poorly designed and cluttered profile pages that take like three years to load. Ugh. From a design point of view it's the dregs of humanity. Online!
I don't know why he bothers making the comparison. Blogs and Facebook do totally different things. On Facebook you add people from your classes who you think are cool or people who went to high school with. Or, you know, people you are actively friends with. People have these urges to make contact with other humans, but some people are shy about it because there is little to no basis for doing so. It's embarassing I guess. lol. But with Facebook you can make small gestures (because a lot of times small is all you want to make) to either friend/message/poke that person. It doesn't need to be a big thing, but it counts in a way.
You don't necessarily want to make them privy to all kinds of information about you. You list all your interests and things, but that can only tell you so much about a person. Pictures are a big part of Facebook as well. The ONLY part as far as I"m concerned. lol. But a lot of people don't put much narrative into their photos. It's just hanging out with friends or whatever. A blog or journal that is personal will probably include more personal details because you can keep knowledge of it's existance pretty limited if you want.
I don't know. It's just apples and organes to me. I don't think the writer is really deeply involved with Facebook/MySpace. I have an LJ and a Facebook profile, and I use them very differently. Perhaps he was over-simplifying the usage of each medium for the sake of making a point.
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