e-tivity 2: weave

Dear all,

I see you’ve had quite an adventure in the blogosphere (as I’d expected!). Sometimes when I provide feedback, rather than using my own words, I like to use yours. Below I’ve made a list of your reactions to the blogosphere. Don’t worry – it gets easier from here on out!

· I spent an amazing amount of time exploring different blogs, and had a hard time finding interesting ones.

· Anyway, when looking for a blog, you should have a clear idea of what you're looking for; otherwise, you'll just get lost in the blogosphere.

· I had some difficulties in finding something responding my expectations, since I got lost several times in the blogsphere!!

· I came up with many different things!

· The blogosphere seems to me extremely big and various, in fact I get lost very easily!!!

· I nearly got lost in the blogosphere!

· ...unfortunately many of them weren’t very interesting or useful.

· I have to admit it is not so easy to find some interesting blogs in the net...

· This task made me crazy!

· I realized that there are thousands (!) of blogs

· It is very easy to get lost in the blogsphere if you are looking around without any particular aim.

· I was jumping from one blog to another without realizing how many blogs I read and I completely forgot about time.

· I got completely lost in the blogsphere!

You’ve also made some very good observtions on what characterizes a blog. What's interesting is that most of you came to similar conclusions. Let’s take a look at your words…This first one sums it up:

I think there is a little bit of everything on the blogosphere.

Style and register:

• There are some phrases that are even difficult to understand because the language in which they are written is extremely colloquial.
• About the language used in the blogs, I have to point out it is quite informal.
• It depends on the blogger and the subject, as well as the intended readership.
• Bloggers can create their style when writing a blog, in order to make themselves unique within the web.
• Every blog has its particular style and language, depending on their authors and on their subject.
• ...people in blogs use colloquial and informal English, blogs are full of slangs and short forms maybe because people feel themselves confortable, they want to express their personal opinions and catch other readers' attention.
• Language and style mainly depend on the author and topic.
• When writing comments, a lot of people use slang and colloquial expressions.
• Blogs use a rather informal style and language.
• Bloggers use exclamation marks and capital letters to give emphasis to what they say.
• Many use slang or even swear words.

• Structure (links, tags, comments):
• The strucure of the site is really interactive, with links to other blogs, to other web sites, to pictures, to the comments and also to multimedia files.
  
  Many blogs show either citations of articles or include video and audio files.
• People used the “comment tool” as if they were “advertisement spaces”
• Links are important in a blog, since they provide the reader the possibility to find more information about the argument he/ she is interested in. Even tags are very useful, because they help the reader find in the posts what they are interested in.
• I appreciated the essential structure and the amount of information provided trought internal links and tags.
• Often there are useful links to other blogs dealing with the same topic, or to single posts of other blogs, even more useful if your looking for very specific information.
• Blogs are written in order to share information and this is why there is a large use of links
• Posts can have different lenghts but they are usually not too long.

See you in the blogoshpere!

Sarah