A post from Susan Mernit's blog, October, 2003:
One of the things I have been thinking about after spending 75 hours in Boston at BloggerCon with 250 or so fellow bloggers, are that we need to recognize that there are distinct categories of bloggers emerging who behave differently and want different things.
Based on input and observation at Bloggercon and a read of the Perseus data, here is my first pass at a classification at types of blog authors (as opposed to readers) for discussion by anyone who cares to respond--
Some blogger segments emerging--
1) The professional journalist. Dan Gillmor and Daniel Weintraub are great examples. So is Nicholas Kristoff. These bloggers are affiliated with a journalist/media entity and their blog is part of a larger initiative from the company.
2) The nontraditional journalist. Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Josh Marshall, and many of the Top 50 most read individual bloggers are acting as de facto journalists. Some of these folks are journalists, some want nothing more than to be accepted as journalists, some don't care either way.
3) Bloggers focused on a specific theme, movement, event, topic or interest---This blog is about my candidate, my weight loss program, my sexual adventures, the books I read, my technology toys, etc. As Mary Hodder points out, topic blogs fit here. Politics and cooking are both HUGE segments.
4) The Education community--K-12 and University both see huge potential for blogging, though the adaptation numbers are small. This is a fast-growing and highly motivated segment.
5) The self-expression/journaling crowd: Blogs offer anyone who wants to--and teens and college students often want to the most--an opportunity to share their experiences and feelings with the universe at large, not to mention their friends. This category can also encompass daily bloggers, even an Ev Williams, as per his description.
6) The business/marketing/promotion community: Another emerging category are the businesses, particular analysts, consultants, and marketers, using blogging to advertise their wares and brand their products, Marketingwonk, JupiterResearch come to mind immediately.
7) Business blogs behind the firewall: It's more talk than action right now, but companies like Traction Software are busy selling blogtools to clients to use as part of a knowledge management program. We don't see those blogs, but this is where much of the revenue is at this early stage.
8) The experimenters & innovators--There's a small but critical segment for whom blogging is about pushing the envelope. Mobblogging, audioblogging, photoblogging, blog search are examples of new ideas powered by technologies that have been developed and enhanced by a small group of innovators and experiments who love to push the limits of the possible.
November 2004: Wow, have things changed!
These classifications still hold, but I'd add:
9) Blog as trade publishing platform--See PaidContent or the new MediaBistro for examples.
10) Blog as mainstream consumer media publication: Gawker, Engadget, Cool Hunting fit that bill.
11) Trasherati--Blogs as gossip columns: This is a subset of 10, but a really juicy one--see Stereogum, Jossip, and lowculture for examples of the genre done well.
12) Blogs as buying guides. Expect more of this--early adopters are Cool Hunting, StyleMaven,
Cool Tools.
13) Blogs as journals and emotional outlets. Who knew online journaling would get so big? Examples include XXX and XX and XXX.
