Structures of blogging

This is my blog post about the qualities of different blog structures and my comparison between two interesting blog examples. I can somehow sense your enthusiasm although this is not exactly an interactive way to discuss. Anyway I’m certain I can manage to surprise you and catch your attention.  I do have a challenge here, as some of you are experienced bloggers, thus having your own preferences; but I’m confident we share some!

Now on to the Topic for today. I started  browsing this site  “Thirteenth Annual Weblog awards” (http://2013.bloggi.es/ ) that has lists of award winning blogs. After surfing a great number of blog categories I soon felt like a tourist walking around Salzburg, Austria,

Saltzburg, a city of many wonders

looking for  W. A. Mozart, my favourite, if not everybody’s favourite composer. Trying not to get too excited about all the beauty I encounter, I decide to axe every other category of blogs except the category: “Most humorous WebLog”.  I go on with my inspection of the Salzburg of blogs but now just walking through this one block of the city. I realise that it well could be that Mozart never lived in this block. So I forgot about him and just picked two different nice looking blogs for comparison:

The Oatmeal  http://theoatmeal.com/

This is a kind of a toy box, or if you want to take a more adult attitude, a tool box of entertainment. It includes an assortment of humor: Comics, Quizzes, a Blog, Books and even a Web Shop. It’s got lots of checkboxes which offer alternative ways to move forward, sideways or backward.

The Bloggess  http://thebloggess.com/

The structure here is, if I dare say, the traditional one: the post, the reader comments; then after an intermission, the next post, the reader comments for that and so on. The analogies to the music world now come back to my mind. I’m not looking for my favourite composer, but I see The Oatmeal-blog as a symphony orchestra. The reader of the blog has for a moment the power of the conductor:

He can choose the instrument which takes the lead and makes a sound and in which volume. Unfortunately the conductor himself or herself also has the responsibility to have all the members of the orchestra well trained and tuned; there’s a lot of work there.

On the other hand The Bloggess is more like a solo pianist who makes her or his

solo in the rhythm chosen by the blogger, and the readers (listeners) digest it and hopefully respond.

For a moment, be the conductor

Liking – disliking and conclusion

You may well already anticipate what I’m going to say here, but I’ll say it anyway. The blogs in comparison are very much different. At first I thought The Oatmeal was a real mess and a potential target for my dislike, and Bloggess appeared to be just what to expect and very straightforward, easy to like. My conclusion is that both of these blog structures can be justified. It just depends on what are you aiming at with your blog. If you want it to be a day-to-day source of contents with a partly constant content and partly with some often updated current information you may choose the Oatmeal –style. If you aim to offer mainly a current and often updated journal –like service, then you might choose the Bloggess –style.

So I say both are fine. It just depends on what you aim to achieve. What do you think?

Now then, please return your opinion as a comment to my blog text.