This post is part of a series about Pinoy Top Blogs. All figures and lists are based on 29 June 2006 data. Previous posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6.Today is the first anniversary of Pinoy Top Blogs!
In "Blogs as Filipiniana, Part I," I promised to come up with a collection development policy (CDP) for blogs in Part II. Well, this series of posts about Pinoy Top Blogs (PTB) to celebrate its first anniversary has provided a good chance for me to go bloghopping.
The following chart reflects my initial attempt at developing a blog classification scheme. Each blog is classified under only one heading, even though it may in fact qualify under several headings. This is also true of books, which may be assigned different subject headings, but eventually have to be assigned a call number. But let's not go there =)
POP - Pop culture blogs make up more than 20 percent of the Top 50, but the more interesting fact is that on 29 June 2006, 50 percent of the Top 10, and 100 percent of the Top 3 (Rickey, BryanBoy and Retzwerx) were POP blogs!
PER - It may be said that most of the PTB blogs are personal ones, but those classified here are the blogs where posts range from the "what I did today" kind to commentary on the state of the nation. In short, the owners write about just about anything. Only one of these (laurganism.com) is in the Top 10.
IT - While the owners of the information technology blogs—and the rest of the Top 50—write about their personal lives, too, the IT blogs are predominantly about hardware, software and tech trends. In the case of sacha chua :: wiki, for instance, her personal life is so heavily IT that it wouldn't make sense to classify her blog under PER.
P&S - Professional and specialty blogs include those devoted to particular fields like nursing (Pinoy R.N.), librarianship (guess who?), cooking (Pinoy Cook and In Our Kitchen), and photography (1001lives and Manila's Daily Grind). It's interesting that the lawyers are not represented in the Top 50. There are a few thousand librarians, but there are definitely more lawyers out there. If someone were to write exclusively about the bar exams, for example, that would be wildly successful in my opinion. Evidence? Pinoy R.N. rocketed to the Top 10 based on one post about the impending release of the board exam results. (Note: Sassy Lawyer isn't on PTB, but she herself has said that her blog isn't really a blawg.)
R&T - The regional and travel blogs include those devoted to Pangasinan, Cebu and Baler, and Pinoy Travel Blog and Ivan About Town. Where are you from? Maybe if you started a blog devoted to happenings in your hometown, and marketed it heavily to them and those interested in your area...
BIZ - These blogs are either part of a business (eRadioportal, Weddings@Work.com, m|PH), or about a kind of business (EntrePinoy Atbp). I included DigitalFilipino.com here even though its entry page is really more of a website and not a blog—because there are no posts arranged in reverse chronological order, no archives, no comments, etc., on the page being tracked by PTB. This is the same blog that I put under "Unknown" in the Frequency chart.
POL - I suppose the political blogs could also be called journalists' blogs, but I think their popularity comes more from the political nature of the posts by the PCIJ reporters, Manuel L. Quezon III and Ellen Tordesillas.
Others - The adults-only blogs (Philippines For Men and The Man Blog) could have been classified under P&S, but it didn't seem quite right, so I put it here. Splasher, meanwhile, probably should be in POP, but if you take a good look at it, it looks very SEO =)
Notes:
Category: Blogging
R&T - The regional and travel blogs include those devoted to Pangasinan, Cebu and Baler, and Pinoy Travel Blog and Ivan About Town. Where are you from? Maybe if you started a blog devoted to happenings in your hometown, and marketed it heavily to them and those interested in your area...
BIZ - These blogs are either part of a business (eRadioportal, Weddings@Work.com, m|PH), or about a kind of business (EntrePinoy Atbp). I included DigitalFilipino.com here even though its entry page is really more of a website and not a blog—because there are no posts arranged in reverse chronological order, no archives, no comments, etc., on the page being tracked by PTB. This is the same blog that I put under "Unknown" in the Frequency chart.
POL - I suppose the political blogs could also be called journalists' blogs, but I think their popularity comes more from the political nature of the posts by the PCIJ reporters, Manuel L. Quezon III and Ellen Tordesillas.
Others - The adults-only blogs (Philippines For Men and The Man Blog) could have been classified under P&S, but it didn't seem quite right, so I put it here. Splasher, meanwhile, probably should be in POP, but if you take a good look at it, it looks very SEO =)
Notes:
- The Ca t has updated a previous study she made last year. In "Profiles of the Top Pinoy Bloggers-an Update," she compares the composition of the Top 100 blogs she studied then with the Top 100 now. (Sorry, Cathy. I know you did a previous study, but I didn't realize there was more than one. So I stopped looking after I saw the one on the Technorati blogs.)
- The difference between The Ca t's categories and my classification illustrates the subjectivity that goes with endeavors like this. The same is true of studies done by market research firms that use different methodologies, etc.
- The PTB Top 50 will not and cannot, of course, be the only basis for a blog CDP. There will be blogs whose owners will choose not to put the PTB code on their sites, blogs that will never make it to the Top 50 but will be useful as reference "materials," and blogs that do not seem important today but, who knows, will eventually be seen as the equivalent of the letters of Jose Rizal. And so, of course, the blog CDP will have to wait for another day.
Category: Blogging
