Skip to main content

Blogging boosts your social life

The ABC reported yesterday afternoon that "blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face." I must admit to feeling a bit this way as well, especially when you discover that there appear to be some (albeit not very many) people out there who are reading what you say (thank you Google Analytics). The fact that potential exchanges are global in scope maybe intensifies the feeling of interaction. I've certainly interacted with more people from a richer variety of cultures than I've perhaps been able to prior to getting into the whole blogging experience (visiting other people's pages, leaving comments, joining into discussions on a whole host of ideas and issues that reflect the diversity of the globe).

The study itself strikes me as a little flawed though, does maintaining a My Space page count as a blog? I've always thought of it as an aesthetically displeasing social network, but maybe that's my age showing!
Labels:

Comments

Megan said…
I'm now addicted to analytics, and I'm glad to know where my hits from Australia are from =). I totally agree with your thought here, as well as your feelings on myspace. I have a page but hardly maintain it. I think the blogging forum is much more interactive, since an account isn't required to check out anyone's page, or leave comments! Australia to Alaska...diversity is alive and well! I'll be checking out your side of the world now too! Thanks for checkin in!
4 March 2008 at 14:47
Kris McCracken said…
No problem. I'll try and rustle up a picture of a Tasmanian Devil, but I expect a moose in return!
4 March 2008 at 21:35
Anonymous said…
Bloggers were defined as users who used the specific blog function offered by Myspace, on multiple occasions.

Thanks for your interest in the research!
4 March 2008 at 22:51
Kris McCracken said…
It really is fantastic to hear from the researchers themselves. Gee the Internet can be bloody useful sometimes! I can’t imagine older forms of technology having anything like the capacity to facilitate that sort of interaction.

After thinking about it yesterday afternoon, I figured that it must have meant that. Having never really delved too deeply into My Space (for fear of epileptic fits from all that flashing gif), I'm no doubt ignorant of how many of its users utilise the blogging tool. Now I'm going to have to locate the published paper itself.

Thanks again for the explanation, that’s made my day!
5 March 2008 at 11:31
Anonymous said…
http://www.liebertonline.com/toc/cpb/11/1 (page 81) for the first article, and second one has been submitted for publication but isn't published yet.

It is amazing how much smaller the world is with the internet. I marvel to think about the delays in / lack of communication for humanity past...

Thanks again!
6 March 2008 at 22:18
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...
62 comments
Read more

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...
50 comments
Read more

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...
5 comments
Read more