Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs are basically an online diary where you can share your personal stories, thoughts, and experiences. These stories are frequently updated by the blogger to be shared to the public. For example, in the article "Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog," Walmart turned to blogging for relief when retailer's public relations began to mount. Their blog highlighted the good deeds of working at Walmart including first hand experiences from its employees. Blogging is beneficial to not just the public, but to corporations as well.
Wikis on the other hand, are not only worked on by one person, but with several whom collaboratively contribute to the project. Anyone can edit the material and it is mostly used for team or group assignments. An example of this would be Google Documents where you can share your document with team members who can all edit and make changes to it. In the article, "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia," there are rules for deploying wikis. They include editing, setting standards, and rules for uploading text or photos. This allows for continuous collaboration among whoever has access to the wiki.

Convergence plays an influential role in today's world especially with technology getting more advanced. There are tons of networks and outlets out there that pave way for easier accessibility and interactions for the users. Lots of information are stored through these types of mediums especially the Internet.

Blogs can be used for collaboration just like wikis. There are bound to be people who share the same interests as you. They could comment on your blogs to show interest or give their advice and thoughts on the situation and vice versa.

I am not sure if this wiki has been done yet or not, but it would be cool to see fantasy football enthusiasts come together and work on a wiki which encourages people to start players who are on their fantasy team for that week. The public would be able to list the pros and cons of a player including their matchup, injuries, ratings etc. I am a huge fantasy football fan myself and I would love to see that happen because it would be beneficial to me.

Citations:

1) Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog, NY Times, march 3, 2008, p. C1

2) Wiki While You Work; The technology popularized by Wikipedia can help companies gather and manage their own collective knowledge. Here's how to get started by Margaret Locher. CIO, May 1, 2008. Vol. 21, Iss. 14

Topic: Blogs vs. Wikis

My research topic includes what I am doing right now; blogging. I am going to compare and contrast the differences and similarities between blogs and wikis. I have never started my own blog or contributed towards a wiki. This will be something new and interesting for me to do research on.  I do know that blogs contain personal stories and thoughts on anything that a blogger would like to share and wikis are sites that let users add or delete content on. I will also be doing more research on how they impact each other or if they are good complements to one another. It would also be good to see what kind of impact they have on users and new media as a whole.