Widgets: Pimp your blog

January 6, 2008

This is a joint post together with Joitske Hulsebosch.

1. What is a widget?

According to wikipedia a widget is a third party item that can be embedded in a web page. Widgets are, hence, little blocks of information which can be added to a blog, mostly in the sidebar. Widgets update information, they are not static. For instance, a widget with the latest comments updates its information with every new comment. Almost any kind of information can be widgetized and offered in a blog as an additional feature. Widgets display, for example, through feeds information from external sources.

2. Why widgets are important and how they can spice up your blog

Blogs alone are nice, but with widgets you can upgrade your blog to an information portal and stimulate interactivity. Posts, comments, trackbacks and links are the key of blogs. That is how a conversation develops. Widgets extend a blog to a platform and allows to include other -dynamic- sources of information besides the blogposts you write. The variety in widgets is huge and ranges from fundraising, links, photos, videos to books, social networks and of course friends. Widgets let you integrate all the other things you do on the web.

3. Different types of widgets

  1. The first category of widgets allows you to include information elsewhere on the internet. Your tag cloud, for instance, shows your links that are of interest to you. A flickr badge displays your photos.
  2. The second category of widgets gives readers of your blog further information from the world wide web.
  3. The third type of widgets are interactive such as a poll or for fundraising. For example, Chipin is a fundraising widget.
  4. The fourth category are for advertisement. For example, your online book library with links to a book store.

4. The downside of widgets

A disadvantage of widgets is the bandwidth behind them and the fact that they can not be fully customized. Often, they are based on javascript and are updated each time through another server, when someone access your blog. When blogs have hickups, it is often related to a slowly server of one of your widgets. Many widgets include also a brand names such as flickr or feedburner, which are not easily excludable. Widgets inside blogs (e.g. wordpress) work often quicker because their content is loaded directly on your server. These widgets can also be better adjusted to your blog design.

5. Finally: the list of cool widgets

  • Wordpress offers a whole variety of widgets for all kind of purposes.
  • Offer a clear RSS subscription from feedburner or feeddigest. You can also display the number of people that have subscribed to your blog through your feedreader.
  • Offer a subscription to your blog by email. With email subscription capability, subscribers can now receive each blogpost in their email inbox, similar to an e-newsletter. This is very important for users who are not used to RSS readers or have low bandwidth. This is offered by feedburner or feedblitz.com.
  • Share your photos via your blog. If you have photos on flickr, you can display them on your blog by using a flickr badge. You can find the steps here.
  • If you want to show your photos in combination with a world map, you can use tripper map. It allows you to display your flickr photoset in combination with a world map.
  • Display recent comments in the sidebar of your blog. Often, readers may not click on the comment section. By displaying the comments in the sidebar, readers can see where and what people have commented. For blogger, you can find a widget here: http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2007/03/recent-comments.html. For wordpress, you can find the process described here: http://freepressblog.org/wordpress-plugins-2/wordpress-recent-comments-plugin-widget/
  • Show your readers by using mybloglog. Readers can sign up and their photos will be displayed.
  • Tell your readers what you are doing right now by inserting a twitter widget. If you are already twittering, you can display your twitters on your blog.
  • Show the blogs that you are reading yourself. That may give people an impression of the kind of topics you like, and may point them to new blogs they may not know. If you are using bloglines, it is possible to display your public bloglist on your blog (called blogroll).
  • Insert any interesting RSS feed. You may produce a feed yourself using a unique tag and you can display it on your blog by using services like feedostyle; feedzilla; or this. Superglu will allow you to gather content from various places and combine it.
  • Display your top tags used on your blog with the Top Tags Widget. It will display your tags in a beautiful cloud formation (or the top tags of any blog.) By showing this, readers will know what you are writing about, and can click on one of the tags to access a category of readings. Blogger allows you to display your categories in the sidebar, which has a similar function, even though it is not displayed in a tagcloud.
  • Or display your del.icio.us tags on your blog.
  • Ask readers for feedback on your blog or any important issue by using a poll.
  • Ask readers to TELL you what they think by using an Odeo widget (via Beth Kanter)
  • In case you have a you tube channel, you can use a widget to display your videos.
  • Raise funds with a widget using ChipIn.
  • Or display your LinkedIn profile.

6. Further resources on (blog) widgets

Top posts 2007 and my lessons learnt

December 31, 2007

It is pleasing to reflect about the most visited posts, from this blog, during 2007. I wonder why some triggered more attention than others; and I am looking forward to applying some lessons learnt in 2008.

  1. 4 examples for innovative mobile phone use in Africa
  2. 10 challenges for web2.0 in organizations
  3. What is enterprise2.0? Five pillars for efficient knowledge sharing
  4. A learning story: My way to web2.0
  5. Blog action day: E-waste, the downside of the growing web
  6. Web2.0, knowledge sharing and IT departments
  7. Innovative online activism mashup
  8. An overview of blogging for development
  9. 3 different conversations: blogs to fight poverty
  10. Social webs in Africa

This top ten present five interesting highlights from 2007:

  1. Web2.0 finally entered on a wide scale organizations and companies.
  2. The web finally goes beyond PC’s and has a breakthrough on mobile phones.
  3. Development aid organizations started to sense a potential in web2.0.
  4. It is the southern hemisphere were many innovative web applications came from.
  5. Web2.0 - the collaborative web is more seen in respect to knowledge sharing and learning.

My personal lessons learnt after half a year blogging are different:

  • Orientation
    Through this blog, I try to focus on giving an overview of different developments and link topics. To fish interesting pieces in the information ocean and link them, gives readers an own perspective to continue. I am glad this seems to trigger growing readers. I am still puzzled about how important the linking to other interesting content is valued although it does not take as much work as writing.
  • Consistency
    As always, the clearer you write the better people will get you. I see blogging as a reflection for my learning. So, I still cannot resist to write rather abstract sometimes, but I will try harder to write more concise. The most consistent posts got most readers.
  • Personal
    Writing from a personal perspective is authentic and triggers most of the comments. I often resist writing too personally because I think content is more important than opinion. However it is quite tricky to find out what my audience values higher. :-)
  • Variety
    I am glad the variety of topics seems to be accepted as my subscribers grow. I am, honestly, simply to curious about many things to not write about them. Like the web, topics are simply so much interwoven, and I believe interdisciplinarity is the key.
  • Time
    I invested quite a lot of time on blogging and I am happy about its outcome. To start doing so means to become part of a network with other bloggers, and that is inspiring.

Lastly thanks a lot to all of my readers for checking this blog out through the year 2007. All the best for 2008.

Citizen journalism in Africa

December 6, 2007

Flickr: verhoogen.beMost countries are far away from reaching the level that Koreans have on citizen journalism, such is the case of the famous Ohmynews: “The Net and Netizens Watchdogging Government.” A pioneer of citizen journalism was certainly indymedia.org, which got famous during the WTO protest back in 1999 in Seattle. In German language there is an interesting concept called “Gegenöffentlichkeit” (counter public); it refers to a Bertolt Brecht’s text about a two way conversation through a radio from last century 1932.

It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.

Mark Glasser says about citizen journalism: “The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.”

The web enables citizens worldwide to engage in this citizen journalism. In Africa a lot is happening on that already. An interesting article on citizen journalism in Africa by IPS-News, “Citizen Journalism Opening Up Political Space in Africa,” describes how the spread of radio and mobile phones have changed the perception of politics and how this can lead to more transparency. Citizens can call in to radio shows and give their opinion in politics. Ghana alone got twenty new radio channels during the last 10 years. So, radio broadcasts more intensive according to the article, but also mobiles are used more and more to raise awareness about human rights violations.

Brenda Burrell said on an interview on mobileactive.org about how a group of human right activists use mobile phones to spread news of latest developments in Zimbabwe. Citzens can report over FrontlineSMS tools on human rights violations. “Our services are so popular because people are really hungry for balanced information, because they do perceive the government media to be propaganda.” FrontlineSMS was developed by Kiwanja and was also used to monitor the last election in Nigeria.

Another facet is the growing blogosphere in Africa and its contribution to critical reports about politics or social development. The ISP article sees a strength in these new blogging efforts. However, probably only minority of blogs are dealing with politics and activism. By the way, in Germany the blogosphere is hardly engaging in activism. Imagine beneficiaries from funds would give through their blogs a direct authentic feedback. However, there is also a risk that local content becomes too overwhelming. Professor Lewis Friedland says there is a trend in the US and recalled “hyper-localism“, which basically lowers the interest for national or global themes. However, in the case of Germany, I wish there would be a lot more engagement, and for Africa I am thrilled to see the growing blogoshpere on Afrigator.com.

Pitfalls of micro blogging via Twitter

November 25, 2007

In my last post I described the potential for social networks by tweets and statuses, but now I would like to add to it some links of interesting blog posts about Twitter and its potential. There is, for example, Nancy White, collecting collaboration stories over Twitter. Another interesting post from Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Why Twitter pays my rent,” describes how you can follow on Twitter in real time what is happening in the world wide web. Lastly, Caroline Middlebrook wrote a nice Twitter guide.

However, in this post I also intend to highlight some possible pitfalls for micro-blogging, how Facebook statuses and Twitter messages are also called. Developments are so fast that reflection of these tools is important, and even though  I risk some culture pessimism, I pointed some out:

  • Quality
    Some things can be expressed through statuses, but is the outcome really needed information? Is it worth the effort to read all these messages?
  • Micro-content
    In 140 characters a lot can be said, but surely nothing thoroughly elaborated and roughly in depth. Can this micro-content help in terms of knowledge sharing or learning? Micro-content is rather vague, or not always precise or self explanatory.
  • Attention
    Clearly, this kind of information needs another attention and might even pressure for more multitasking and loss of concentration. It is another step to blur the border between being online and offline.
  • Time consuming
    The question here is whether it is more efficient to email or add another piece to the information overload. Or is it really an own channel for communication?
  • Privacy
    There is without a doubt a privacy issue of how much you want to let others know about yourself. Being virtually connected does not mean you want to share so much of your privacy.  How can one compromise with the dilemma of being public and private at the same time?
  • Time span
    Mostly, there is only a certain window of reception for a message before it is gone. It is a bit like blog posts which get attention the first few days and then they are often forgotten.
  • Engagement
    It needs a certain size of network and engagement from it to really get feedbacks. Does micro-blogging really lead to exchange or are there just many voices and no responses?
  • The zero sum game of communication
    The time used on these tools is spent less on others. On Skype chats or Twitter, communication is divided into small bits, what makes it even more difficult to get the whole picture.

Blogs vs. Books for learning

October 30, 2007

This post is rather abstract. It depicts me being puzzled about choosing between blogs or books. The question is if these two media could even be compared at all? Today I heard a presentation on which it was said that the internet is no medium, in the way that you absorb no knowledge from it, and so, only printed publications make you reflect the content.

Flickr giandoObviously, I have doubts about the previously said, but there are many differences between blogs and books. Just to describe a few, here, on blogs, links give further information and also feedbacks are commented directly. On books, the content stands for itself and in many cases only the bibliography shows a reference. Blogs are quick and informal, hold personal–short or long–reflections and often try to keep up with the rapid pace of the web. Books are well thought and take months or years to be published, and are based on a framework of hypothesis. Books were for centuries the ultimate way to share and acquire knowledge, but this has changed with the Internet fundamentally. In the early days, the Internet was great as a book searching tool, yet the overall knowledge offered was rather weak.

Nowadays, the Internet offers tremendous resources to learn and even allow us to share and create new knowledge. This is a way of how we process knowledge and learn completely different, as indeed Philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann points out in this quote I translated into English:

We do not approach things causal linear. We do not try to tap a text from its inner structure, instead, we approach associative information; we sample much more, we work much more on the principle of collage/montage. Peaces of knowledge, texts, photos, all we find in Internet, we rearrange, sort it individually. We do not tap and understand things in the classical approach of the hermeneutic, simply because this new medium supports much more to tackle problems in an associative manner.

This is an interesting description which shows how networked learning can look like. Blogging, therefore, is a mean to start reflecting the sheer mass of information or bring it down to some puzzle pieces. The sheer incredible pace of information, however, cannot be reflected just by blogging and linking. Books give still space for reflection although on the next page there are not dozens of links to follow. To read a book from beginning to end is consequently a very different experience than to read blogs. I do not want to miss any of them, but I start wondering how to keep up with the pace of information.

From small to big engagement - big players are entering the web2fordev field

October 27, 2007

This week two interesting web2.0 projects for development were released. One is a new website from Ebay called MicroPlace, and the other is a new blog called ideas 4 development. Slowly, big players such as development organizations or companies use web2.0 technology to promote discussions around development or to bundle their capacity to leverage the power of micro-financing.

Ideas 4 development
Some days ago I got an email from Quentin Lebègue telling me about a new blog:

I read your post “an overview of blogging for development“. You’re right, there are not a lot of blogs about development. I wanted to present you a new collective and international blog on development: Ideas for development.

At first, I was surprised about the “viral marketing” for such a “top” blog, but then I was also impressed about how people behind it take the blogosphere and its networked conversations serious. I read some of its articles and followed with interest that the posts from people such as Pascal Lamy from the WTO have triggered some first discussions. I could not find any provocative comments or expressions of doubt or frustration as Pierre Jacquet (Chief Economist - Agence Francaise de Developpement) said on the launching press conference:

“The heads of development organizations are sometimes portrayed as inaccessible bureaucrats, who decide among themselves on the faith of the world’s poorest nations. Through this blog the members will openly share their ideas, their doubts and even their frustrations manifesting their interest for dialogue with other development professionals, students and the broader public. We hope that this initiative will be the provider of fresh ideas and a catalyst for improvements in the way multilateral and bilateral organizations, as well as their partners in the south, see development. This blog is in your hand let’s begin the debate.”

I find that the approach of the blog goes in the right direction and this blog will lead to an authentic conversation, if the above taken statement is meant serious. The need for an open dialogue is obvious or inescapable. The discussion will be held anyway and its audience is on the rise, even the old media is following it. Therefore, I wonder why is it limited to the directors of such organizations? I am curious what the outcome would be? Will it then be used as a feedback mechanism? Will the comments be back channelled to the development organizations and lead to change? For example, so far, not a single commenter seems to have an answer, and some blog posts are pretty close to a public relation message.

MicroPlace - Invest Wisely. End Poverty.
The second interesting news this week was about a platform for microfinance called MicroPlace, where according to Ebay “you can make investments that reach millions of hard-working poor people worldwide.” It is an interesting attempt to widen the scope of peer to peer lending, to connect lenders and grant seekers worldwide in a transparent process. NextBillion.net describes in their interesting post the difference between Microplace and Kiva.

Big players - a shift in the web2fordev field?
These two examples show that slowly conventional and rather big actors are harnessing the potential of web2.0 for development. Small agile players such as Kiva.org and many fascinating blogs out there proved the innovative and network potential of web2.0 tools. I wonder whether they will be capable of a two way conversation and whether their work mode is web2.0 compatible, as there is so little about tools and much more about culture. Granting Oxfam and Care, guests commentary fields, are just the beginning. Organizations gradually will have to interact with a multitude of actors ranging from individual activists, groups, NGOs, business and so forth.
So far the most innovative ideas came from individuals or teams, and the Internet helps millions of people to benefit from this ideas. However, in the case of MicroPlace, “a new peer-to-peer lending platform backed by eBay that has gone through all the necessary SEC regulatory hoops that make it possible for investors to invest in these individuals and make a return on their investment.” I wonder to which extend the capacity is needed to get these platforms established. So far, to me, the strength lies in social networks through blogs and all kinds of innovative platforms driven by enthusiasts.

3 different conversations: blogs to fight poverty

October 8, 2007

Thanks to Tom L. and Peter Ballantayne for their very interesting remarks on my post “an overview of blogging for development.” Peter argued that there are a lot different blogs in development aid or international cooperation out there and “must be loads more, just not very visible.” And Tom had a great point:

What’s probably as important as noting the existence of the blogs themselves is tracking the development of the aid-development blogosphere, examining the connections (strength, regularity, theme) between blogs and seeing if there are purposive and deliberate communities building out there. Not many groups are actually taking aggregation a step further and building connections and seeking to create value to the profession from the new-found willingness to share online.

I agree with Peter that there is probably much more of it out there, but I criticize that in most cases it is not linked and therefore has no networks. And as Tom rightly points out, there is little knowledge sharing and discourse between different bloggers, different organizations. I give you three examples how different the approaches are and what is behind them. I analyzed all three blogs with technorati.com and aiderss.com to find out about their network and discussions.

Blog World Hunger
This blog is from the International Food Policy Research Institute. They also presented their web2.0 approach on the web2fordev conference. They have been experimenting with blogs internally for knowledge sharing for already some years. This internal blogging seemed to me quite vibrant since it involves a lot of staff. However, when you look at the external blog, you have a complete contrast. Six posts and seven comments in 2007. I wonder why they even use a blog and not a normal website. In Technorati, it has 9 blog reactions in 2007 (other blogs linking to it), and in del.icio.us it has been bookmarked only one time (from me!).
Certainly not a blog to network nor discuss the issue of world hunger with a broader community. For example it does not link to any other blog. It seems to be a place to just drop various documents and articles.

The following two blogs are very different in which one is grassroot driven and the other from the World Bank.

William Kamkwamba’s Malawi Windmill Blog
This is a blog about William Kamkwamba, the 19-year-old self-taught engineer who built a windmill power system for his family’s home in Malawi. His story was broadcasted at the TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania. (Check out all the other great presentations). His blog, which started back in June, got over 222 blog reactions according to Technorati. It has been commented 52 times and it has been bookmarked 48 times in del.icio.us. No doubt that that blog is a great storyteller and invites to read and interact. It also clearly is meant to support William in his eduction. Furthermore, it has been nicely embedded into the wider blogosphere and the result is remarkable. It has big attention.

End poverty in South Asia blogEnd poverty in South Asia
This is a blog run by the Shanta Devarajan, the Chief Economist of the South Asia Region at the World Bank. His statement “End poverty in one generation. It can be done in one generation” makes the goal clear. It is quite an offensive approach for an organization such as the world bank in my opinion. This has triggered already 49 comments two 12 posts since it started in September, and it has aroused over 20 blog reactions so far. Similar to William’s blog and in contrast to the world hunger blog, it gives a personal perspective, and evokes feedback. However, I am curious to see how an organization such as the world bank will keep such an open discourse and how it can contribute:

This is why I am starting this blog. To contribute to the debate (sometimes, to start one) with ideas, analysis and evidence so that South Asians—and people who care about South Asia—can have a dialogue on these critically important issues, so that together we can end poverty in South Asia. (Shanta Devarajan)

In conclusion, I think blogs are used in more and more different ways. However, blogs are often not part of networks nor refer to each other. The communication is a one way street or the discourse is not happening in a social network of blogs. And interestingly there is still a wide gap between the many piles of documents for development themes and the few pioneers tempting to have a two way conversation about development.

web2fordev conference has started

September 25, 2007

A great first day on the web2fordev conference lies behind me. I arrived on Sunday and already had the pleasure to sit around with my fellow bloggers - journalists from Africa. Lately they already made some very interesting podcasts and during the conference we will have video interviews, but also direct video coverage from selected sessions. It is so far a great atmosphere with people from all around the world as far as the Fidschi, South Sea. Today we focused on training for web2.0 beginners. I did two presentation on blogging and tagging together with Tobias Eigen, Karel Novotny and Pier Andrea Pirani and many more were involved.

bild-2.pngWe are the FAO headquarter in Rome and we already had interesting discussions on web2fordev. I really liked a presentation by Janyanta Chatterjee about Sharing farmers knowledge through audioblog, which shows the impressive potential of these new technologies. And it will become even more effective ones it goes over mobile phones.

I really liked the openness and high interest of all participants, which was very motivating as a presenter. Once again I experienced how complex web2.0 is and how many facets it has. Blogging was fairly easy to present, whereas the different purposes of blogging are often not known. I presented the personal blog approach, a perspective on an internal group blog, the Nata village blog and the Voices of the field blog.

Very intriguing was a discussion during our tagging presentation. Even though tagging sounds in general easy, I experienced once again, how different tagging is used and therefore how tricky it is to explain it. Nevertheless the interest by audience showed to me that many sense the power in it. I will write the next days more posts from the conference either here or at the web2fordev blog.

An overview of blogging for development

September 19, 2007

Background
As some of you might already know I work for GTZ (German Technical Cooperation), and I am of course very interested in the potential of the web towards development aid and international cooperation. Surprisingly–and correct me if I am wrong!–but to me, it seems there are not many blogs out their in this field yet. There are of course a lot of portals –and two of the big ones are the development gateway or eldis.org. However, in my opinion, the development sector has yet not grasped the potential of web2.0. I already argued in a post that the result is that this shift, so far, is challenging traditional development agencies.

What is there in the world wide web?
One interesting website is aid worker network, which contains personal blogs from all around the world. There are also individual blogs that describe in an authentic and provoking way how it is to work in this field. Check out these examples from Afghanistan and Sudan.
The science world is also blogging, and such is the case of Oversea Development Institute or professors such as Dan Rodrik for international political economy, or John Daly for knowledge for development. But once again, I am surprised that for such an international topic, blogs are not used in a wider scale. For example, why aren’t there any more professors having blogs? And why so few development organizations offer blogs? Some organisations in this field have started experimenting with it (Worldbank) or using it as a first step internally (GTZ, UN etc.).

screenshotBlogs for storytelling
As blogs can have different purposes and styles of expression, in the humanitarian relief field, they seem to be quite successfully used. The Guardian issued an interesting article (not online available) a few weeks ago, which highlights the potential for blogs and how organisations such as Oxfam or the International Rescue Comittee (IRC) use them as an strategic communication tool. Other examples are “Voices from the field“, representing the work from IRC and impressions from all around the world; and Ian Bray from Oxfam blogging for BBC about the recent flood in India.

In old times, it took weeks to get information form disasters into the global media and “now we can get blogs or photos up in just hours, which are able to get voices of ordinary people heard by a potential audiences of millions and can really press home the desperation and emergency situation happening on the ground.” So, in a way donors can read from the beneficiaries about what has happened to their money. The article continues, especially the Tsunami “revolutionised the aid world’s use of digital media”, being it the above described as different communication or the direct funding over the web. Blogging itself opens new fast ways of coverage, but even more importantly, an individual perspective from persons concerned.

The difference technology made
The economist argues in a recent article, “technology is transforming humanitarian relief—and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients.” The article describes how Internet and mobile phones offer new instruments to coordinate more efficiently disaster relief. Relief Web is a portal to coordinate these efforts. It describes also that communication is not a one way street, through more cheaply available technology such as mobile phones, also small NGOs or even individuals can engage. So, “technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done.” “In the humanitarian operation of the future,” says Save the Children’s Mr Porter, “beneficiaries of emergency aid will use technology to tell us what they need—cash, food, or education—find out from us what to expect, and track its arrival, just as we can track an order from Amazon.com now.”

Weekly links: Blogging for democracy and African ingenuity

September 15, 2007
  • Two articles on mobile for development
    Mobiles for the ‘world’s poorest’ is a new article from BBC, which describes how Jeffery Sachs Millenium village project applies mobile phones. Another article describes how PDAs are saving lives in Africa.
  • Blogging for democracy around the world
    Interesting interview with Antony Loewenstein, who talks about his trip to various countries to visits blogger writing for democracy. In his opinion “Blogs have certainly democratised the political process, and allowed “average” citizens the chance to engage.” In another guardian commentary he argues in the context of the Arab world, that Bloggers “are challenging the political status-quo like never before, despite the risks in doing so.”
  • Afrigadget
    A great blog from Erik Hersman, kikuyumoja and others, which shows the fascinating art of improvisation in Africa. Check out for example the BodaPhone or a home made welding machine. The title of the blogs says it all: Solving everyday problems with African ingenuity.

Innovative online activism mashup

September 9, 2007

Ethan Zuckerman presents a great example of on-line activism; this time on the President of Tunisia. It is a video made by Astrubal about the Tunisian presidential airplane. Although the President has been only out of the country three times in the last years, the airplane has been sighted all over Europe. As people all over the world make photos of airplanes and upload them to websites, the presidential airplane has been identified in different locations many times throughout the last years.

But Ben Ali’s plane has been to Europe far more often, raising questions about whether the official plane, fueled at taxpayer expense, is being used to accomodate vacations in the south of Spain or shopping excursions in the fashion centers of Europe.

It seems to me that this great video shows the power of the web within different dimensions:

  1. Using the rich data and information available in the web (airplane photos)
  2. Collaboratively investigating background information (presidential flights)
  3. Using available tools to produce a striking video (Google maps)
  4. Offering this movie to a worldwide audience on video sharing sites
  5. Advocating for the cause in different networks through blogging

Why to blog? What difference does blogging make?

August 26, 2007

There are many different types of blogging. Rohit Bhargava shows us 25 different ones in his presentation, starting from insight over piggyback to bridge blogging. What fascinates me the most, it is the reasons why people blog. Throughout the last months bloggers tagged each other: Why Do You Blog? These are some examples showing how different but also how similar the reason’s for blogging are:

Way more down-to-earth is a Pew Internet study which summarizes the following top reasons of why people blog:

  1. to express yourself creatively
  2. to document your personal experiences or share them with others
  3. to stay in touch with friends and family
  4. to share practical knowledge or skills with others
  5. to motivate other people to action
  6. to entertain people
  7. to store resources or information important to you
  8. to influence the way other people think
  9. to network or to meet new people
  10. to make money

Personally, I find much more inspiring what Esra from Bahrain writes about:

In this new age of information technology, not only are blogs used to inform, but to help us network with other like-minded individuals from across the globe. In the Arab world, political activism through blogging is becoming more common, and is actually influencing a lot of the mainstream media outlets, pressuring them to cover human rights violations.

Blogging can be used for cross-cultural understanding and dialogue, and there are more and more pan-Arab group blogs emerging. Personally, I share a group blog with other young writers from Mauritania, Tunisia, and Morocco; something which helps me understand their cultures better. Had it not been for blogging, I would be embarrassingly ignorant about them and their societies, even though these are fellow Arabs I am talking about.

The web and particularly personal stories from people in blogs make us aware of how it is to live in different places. Blogging bridges cultures, opens unlimited network potential, and helps us to overcome strangeness. But I see one problem, to bridge countries, cultures and communication, we need a common language such as English. However, when we are writing in one only common foreign language, we will eventually limit ourselves to not be able to express fully our thoughts. To be continued …


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