Our blog www.tamponsandtoilettalk.blogger.com was to try something similar to Dollymix a blog aimed at women. We tried to use a women’s news angle for our blog to be more ‘niche’ orientated. The problem with this is it still had a celebrity angle to it, which we didn’t want. The blog was about news not celebrities! However we chose news by what we wanted to read about. There were no problems with setting up the blog or writing. It was time consuming though because there was just 2 of us in a group which meant we had to put a lot more time into it. We aimed to post 4 blogs a day each. We covered topics such as sex and relationships to hard news and hoped it would have a slightly opinionated edge with a lot of humour. It was difficult to set up you tube clips related to our page. The lady bar managed to pull in all sorts of rude images that we had to change.

 

We wanted our page to be individual so we even put a picture of me with a tampon in my mouth as the logo connected with the blog.

We also discussed what we were going to write about, scanning through news websites and papers and dealt out different topics fairly. So Becki won’t be writing all about health while I was writing all about fashion.

 

I think if we were to do another blog like this we would have put a lot more time and more blogs per day as well as putting a bit more effort into the design of the blog. We worked well together and we both got to write about different topics and news we were passionate about.

 

 

 

To the naked eye this is just a man doing some terrible dancing in different places. In fact whatever way you look at it. It still is. With over 9 million hits on Youtube this is what it was designed for. Matt has travelled from America to Australia to Guam to Antarctica. Dancing with local people and animals. My first reaction to this was, ‘this is lame I can’t believe I’m watching this.’  As I carried on it’s amazing how many places he has travelled showing there’s a bit more to life than working. A lot of people have commented on how inspiring this is. If it wasn’t for Youtube what would be the point in this? You could make a series about travelling but part of me thinks a 3-minute clip of this man dancing around the world says a lot to Youtube viewers. Making people take not of their own lives and realise there is a lot more to the world than their tiny lives. The music would have you believe this as well, if they had played hi ho silver lining or some equally crappy music over this it would seem like you’re watching an idiot dance but with matt’s choice of music he’s really made this into something epic. His website talks a lot about matt and people are able to trace him on his journeys. A company has even paid him to do this all again! So that’s how you make money on Youtube!

 

 

 

Nobody is quite sure who started the first blog but its pretty much between these guys. Brian Redman, Brad Templeton and Justin Hall.

So blogging seems to be a pretty common thing these days but Rebecca Blood shows how 1999 was the time for a huge rise in bloggers. Its popularity grew due to the fact that more people had computers and access to the Internet. Blogging gives people a chance to open up their ideas and opinions to the world. It appeals to me because i can get all my thought in to the big wide world and can be quite therapeutic, nothing feels better than having a good moan or a criticising someone else’s opinion. Chances are in real life i wouldn’t do that to some bodies face!

 

So the shiny media thing has got me thinking, a lot of the blogs for shiny media are gossip related, celebrity junk as well as some blogs that fit certain niches. There is probably a blog on every interest you could think of. It reminds of those random magazines you hear about specifying in cotton reels or hotdogs. I can imagine big magazine publishing companies sitting down and saying’ “you know what we really need? A magazine about toilet seats.” it makes me think maybe too much is out there and does anyone really care that much? For example my guilty pleasure is cheesecake. I’m sure if i looked hard enough I’d find a blog about cheesecake. But would I want to read it. No, because that would make me a loser. i have had a look at some of the sites and the one that I really like is Dollymix. Designed for women, mainly written by women. Including topics like sex and relationships, women on top, health and beauty, politics, feminism and family. The blog is fantastic with a lot of it video clip based, great for finding little treats to make you laugh while you’re at work. Its pretty inoffensive and there isn’t the bitchy angle to it, like you can find with blogs that have celeb news on. Oh yeah and i love the fact that celeb news isn’t mentioned on its topics. It still manages to get some in. It’s like its trying not to be a cliché for women. It’s not saying ‘hey, here’s a blog for women and its mainly about celebs.’ even though i have to say i quite enjoy a bit of inane celeb gossip. Its still has the usual advertising all over it, mainly by google ads. Guess it’s got to makes some money some how! Although its hard to read some of the articles without feeling like I’m listening to a bunch of women still going on about how hard it is to be women and live in a male dominated society. Man bashing isn’t my thing. The suffragette’s thing has been and gone. We get to vote, a lot of women get paid a lot more than men. Quit moaning. We’re not victims! to be fair it has gone some pretty interesting articles and some really witty and funny writing at times. Also the thing with shiny media is because they have so many commercial blogs you’re being advertised their other blogs before you’ve even looked at one. This goes to show the hierarchy within the blogging world. Once you at the top its pretty you pretty much stay there, especially if you’re all owned by one big commercial set up. Of course they’re only going to link with other top blogs. i feel like some smaller blogs aren’t getting a chance!

By 2011 it’s estimated that 1.5 Billion people could be using the internet!

Have a look a how many people are on the net and who’s looking at what. Apparently its not all about sex!

For uk stats have a look at,

www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/product.asp?vlnk=5672

for world wide web users check out pew internet & American Life Project.