Arts/Entertainment: Perez Hilton
Purpose:
- Distribute "secret" information on the lives of celebrities
-Give everyday people a look into the lives of the people we watch on TV
Voice:
-Very informal, almost like its a friend telling you a secret rather then a blog reciting information
Design:
-Very feminine in the sense that there is a pink backdrop as well as an advertisement for a TV show to be aired on "Women's Entertainment"
-Simply vertical design
Multi-Media:
-Pictures and Video links are everywhere, making this a very visually stimulating page
Journalistic: Daily Beast
Purpose:
-Much more of a news orientated blog when compared with Perez Hilton
-Article titles such as "Oscar Nominations" and "Remapping the Union" seem very professional
Voice:
-The voice seems professional, but not to the extent of say CNN or BBC
Design:
-A lot of white space to not distract the reader from the article at hand
-Looks very similar to an online newspaper
-Columns
Multimedia:
-Not as prevalent as Perez Hilton, but photos are shown in blog topics as well as within the physical post.
Lifestyle: I don't know, what do YOU want to eat?
Purpose:
-A blog on recipes and other interesting ways to make unique meals
Voice:
-Voice seems to be passive, as if its a cooking show on a blog
-Does not seem formal at all
Design:
-The background of food only adds to the blog, giving it a complete feel of food as well as creating something
Multimedia:
-Not much multimedia is shown, occasionally a photo will be integrated into a blog, but it is nothing compared to Perez Hilton and Daily Beast
News/Politics: Hot Air
Purpose:
-A voice on modern politics, it is very opinionated, but that is simply within the nature of politics
Voice:
-Professional
-Seems much more uptight then the food blog as well as Perez Hilton
-Very opinionated and almost tense
Design:
-Similar to Daily Beast in the sense that neither has a background
-Individual posts divided into columns to ensure that more posts can be read
Multimedia:
-Each post has at least a picture and/or a video describing what is also in words
-Makes it much easier to understand the political ideas and is also visually stimulating
Science/Technology: Bad Astronomy
Purpose:
-Ironically enough its a pretty specific blog on the stars as well as other astronomic categories
-Actually seems to have some in-depth information
Voice:
-Although this is a harder topic to understand and many other blogs would have been rude, this blog has a very calm and respectable voice, almost as if its an elementary school teacher talking to a young student
Design:
-Very standard blog design
-Similar to blogger and others in the sense that its simple vertical and not in columns
Multimedia:
-Each individual post has a photo integrated into it, giving the reader a little something to compare the work to.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your evaluations, I noticed how similarly I evaluated these sites myself. I definitely agree with your purpose and voice of Perez Hilton, I don’t think there is much to dispute there. However, something that I think should be added to the purpose category is to promote various programs and companies through advertising. Sure, many of the blog sites we view have advertisements, but Perez Hilton had by far the most and is definitely making big bucks by advertising for TV shows, clothing lines and other celebrity initiatives. I also agree with you about how feminine the site was. There was a lot of pink and much of the advertising was for female blog goers, such as the dresses on the bottom left side of the blog.
I thought that the Daily Beast was an interesting blog to evaluate. I agree with you, it did remind me of an online newspaper, and I found much of its news to be very recent and important. However, I felt like there was too much information being thrown at me as soon as I entered the site. I think they could have done a better job sorting or archiving their posts.
The blog I don’t know, what do YOU want to eat struck me as a very plain blog…it wasn’t that much more sophisticated looking than our class blog. However, I thought that its simplicity made sense given the straight forwardness of the topic. I liked how easy it was to navigate the blog and the how the blog is archived in a way that allows me to find a recipe for almost anything I want.
Hot Air, also reminded me of the Daily Beast, but I found this blog to have a bit more of a serious feel to it. I liked how there were big headlines with pictures, which attracted my eye and made it easier for me to choose what I wanted to read about. I also thought that the blog was exceptionally organized so that I could navigate to any news topic I wanted. I think this blog was a step above the Daily Beast in terms of organization and seriousness in its delivery of news.
Out of all the blogs you evaluated, the one that may have grabbed my attention the most was Bad Astronomy. Something that I could not get over was how cool some of the images were; they really catch your eye. I agree with you that it’s harder to evaluate this blogs voice and purpose, because without a background in science or astronomy it may be difficult to understand everything the authors are writing about. I also found that this site had a rather extensive blogroll that could connect the reader to other interesting astronomy related blogs. Lastly, I felt Bad Astronomy had a lot of open white space, especially on the right side that could be used to make the blog more aesthetically appealing.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteYour evaluations were very similar to mine, especially for your first two blogs. For instance, I too think that Perez Hilton's blog is very visually stimulating. Perhaps that is why it is one of the most famous blogs out there in the blogoshpere? Or maybe thats just his distribution of the secrets of celebrity life, as you say? Whatever it is, it's working.
I also completely agree with what you said (that it sounds like a cooking show on a blog) about the voice of the "I don't know, what do YOU want to eat?" blog. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Julie and Julia, but that's the first thing that came to mind when I read this blog. In the movie, the character, Julie, writes a blog about a new recipe she is trying out of a famous chef, Julia's, cookbook. Reading the blog felt very similar to watching Julie blog about her recipes from the Julia cookbook, as they both were just basically new recipes of the day. I don't really see a big difference between this and a website such as allrecipes.com. Do you?
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I really liked the format you used in order to evaluate the various blogs. It actually reminded me a lot of the “Click Opera” post in Imomus’ Blog. It is an interesting and constructive way of looking at comparisons, while not flooding the reader with a lot of text in paragraphs. I also really enjoyed it because it looked almost identical to the observations that I had made about each category of blogs. I particularly enjoyed the lifestyle blog “I don’t know, what do YOU want to eat?” The way that the blogger adds her own anecdotes, while still giving the readers what they want—recipes—I thought was a great take on a lifestyle blog. In addition, the organization of this blog is superb. The reader can view the blog for up-to-date entries by the blogger, or search for certain recipes by meal. I enjoyed the lifestyle blog, “The Sartorialist,” as well. However, this blog provides mostly images and little text. As much as this is enjoyable for a reader, I thought the cooking blog may have been a better take on a lifestyle blog. I also wonder where you think each of these blogs may fall between academic and non-academic blogs? I personally had a hard time distinguishing between the two for a lot of these blogs. This confusion led me to wonder further: what makes a blog academic? Is it the content of the information being discussed or the tone in which said information is being discussed? Furthermore, which type of blog do you see yourself most relating to?