** My Intellectual Flakes **

I happened to pick up an article by Herring et al. (2005) concerning blogs as genre. The paper should be a pioneer work regarding the defining charateristics of blogs in relation to other media -offline or online, old and new. It was found that although filter blogs featuring links to and comments on other web sites are assumed to be the prototypical blog type, authors found 70% of blogs in their sample fell into personal journal type.

During lunch, watchsnow mentioned that she felt blogs at Hong Kong started as personal journal type. She herself actually didn’t have any expereince with the fiter type of blogs. We then did some research to confirm that.

From wikipedia:

目前，很多香港互聯網使用者都熱衷撰寫網誌。然而，網誌的主要使用方式及方向亦有異於其他地區，香港使用者主要將網誌服務當作日記使用，亦不會把內容公開。未經查證的資料指，香港最多人使用的網誌服務是Xanga或Yahoo BLOG，其他如Blogger、MSN Spaces、無名小站等在其他地區流行的網誌服務則較少香港人使用。

Based on another interesting webiste watchsnow recommend to me

隨著Xanga的興起，香港不少青少年均以Xanga作為網上日記，而Xanga的留言及blogring功能等亦令它可作社交和聯誼用途。及後Yahoo blog吸引了不少藝人開blog，由於藝人網誌多以相片為主，加上網民以為可藉此與偶像交流，故這類網誌的點擊率普遍較高。

I couldn’t help but wonder what implications this blogging culture has for local students. Is it possible that many students perceive blogs mainly as a channel to broadcast personal events? Will students jump to the conclusion that blogs are not for them once they exclude themselves from the journal-writing type? Or does it mean that HK students might have more difficulty adapting to academic blogs – blogs more on ideas and critical thinking?