An intesting look at categories of blog posts from BoingBoing’s Guest blog:
Informative: short, sweet, linked. Makes a quick point and backs it up with a link to another site. Boing Boing has made this into an art form.
Blisdom (blog wisdom): can be short or long, relies on a narrative to make a subtle point. Often pulled from a life experience. Here’s an example from a conversation with my wife:
Wife: I just had the strangest dream. I was on a train…
Me: Coach or First Class?
Wife: Honey, I don’t dream in coach.
Vanity Post: Often inane. Represents everything that journalists like to point to and say, “See, blogs are worthless.”
‘While the unexamined life may not be worth living the overexamined life is not worth reading.’
–Scott Simon of NPR on “inane weblogs”
That doesn’t mean these blog entries aren’t interesting when read as part of the whole blog…it just means that if there is a point, it is often missed by the casual visitor, like going from Sopranos series 1 to series 4.
Fiction: There is a lot of emerging fiction popping up from blogs. Harder to find, but worth the journey.
Then comes the post that has had the biggest affect on my life. I don’t have a clever name for it, so let’s just call it the “shoes” post…as in walk a mile in another’s shoes. Sometimes it has a clear point, and other times it just resonates inside you. Whatever the author’s point behind the post, it takes on new meaning in your own mind. Sometimes you learn something about someone else, but often you learn something about yourself.
I like to think of my posts as a combination of Informative and Blisdom, giving a tiny slice-of-my-life to readers while at the same time posting short sweet links along with my thoughts on the matter.