Apparently I’m biased 

I’m a sucker for celebrity gossip. As I have said before, it’s my guilty pleasure. Prior to be introduced to blogs, I would read all of the latest news in my copy of Us Weekly or watch a show like Entertainment Tonight. Now, I log on to http://www.perezhilton.com.  One of my former co-workers used to always talk about the gossip that he read on the website. “A gossip blog like Perez Hilton has a huge readership-220,000 page views daily ” (Clive Thompson pg 32).  When I go on Perez’s site, I am constantly entertained by the pictures and the comments he posts. What l like about him is that he doesn’t hold any punches and he doesn’t try and cater to the celebrities or kiss up to them. He tells it like he sees it. And if he doesn’t like you, watch out. Britney Spears has been bearing the brunt of most of his offensive comments as of late.

Clive Thompson, the author of “Blogs to Riches The Haves and Have-nots of the Blogging Boom”, talks in detail about the top blogs. Gawker is also a celebrity gossip blog and is ranked 24 overall among all blogs. It is leading the pack and beating out Perez Hilton. I had never heard of this blog until I read this article. So, I went on the site to view the page. The site did have a lot of celebrity gossip but I felt the layout was quite boring compared to Perez Hilton. Unfortunately, I must be in the minority. “With 4,790 sites now linking to it, Gawker towers above the more-recent entrants such as PerezHilton.com (with 1,549 links).” (pg 32). I’m still on Team Perez.

Why do I have to blog?

To be perfectly honest, on the first day of class when Prof. Halavais told us that we would not be using blackboard and that our response papers would need to be posted on wordpress, I was surprised. First of, I didn’t even know how to go about starting a blog or creating one. “A blog is really quite simple. It’s nothing more than a personal web site with content displayed in reverse-chronological order” (R.Scobale, S. Israel, Naked Conversations pg 27).  What I have learned over the last several weeks is that I enjoy posting our response papers on our own personal blog and having the opportunity to interact with my classmates via this forum. It definitely changes things up and I find myself spending more time and putting extra emphasis on what my final paper will be. After all, anyone can read this. Even the authors of the books that have been selected for our weekly readings. “According to Pew, one-fourth of all Web users in the United States read blogs, and that number is increasing at the rate of 60 percent annually” (R.Scobale, S. Israel, Naked Conversations pg 25).

Even in my other graduate course, Visual Aesthetics, the professor wants us to blog each week. She expects each us to post each week and make comments about other classmates blogs. The added benefit to this she has told us is that if we don’t speak often in class, this gives us another opportunity to voice our opinion and gain participation points.  In undergrad, I didn’t have this option. We either spoke in class or we didn’t. The blogs allow the quiet student who’s not comfortable speaking up in class, to still share their thoughts with everyone.

 I guess my question for this week is do you think everyone should have a blog? I mean tons of celebrities are writing their own blogs now. Do you think it’s become out of control?  The examples that have been given as to the types of blogs out there make sense to me. Alot of them are technology driven and have appropriate subject matter that appeals to different groups of people but as much as I like my gossip, it’s not to the point where I will look up Victoria Posh’s blog and read more about her.