Blogs vs. Wikis

In our New Media course, everyone has a blog and a wiki. The layout and design of the blogs are base on our own preference. When we visit each others' blogs, we can see different looks and feel on the pages. There is only one editor for the blog - yourself. We can share personal news, feelings and many different things on our blogs. People also can leave comments about your post after reading it. In "How can we measure the influence of blogosphere?" by  Kathy E. Gill, she mentions people blogging as Journalism. It is not like newspaper or magazine, but as the words of James W. Carey, "It can be practiced 'virtually anywhere and under almost any circumstances... To make experience memorable so it won’t be lost and forgotten is the task of journalism'".Writing a blog is like writing a diary. Nobody can controls what you want to write on your blog. Visitors can join to your blog as followers and have interaction with you like leaving messages or posting comments. Blogs can provide the latest posts, comments and opinions to the readers and writers. Therefore, this is the best way to make friends inside or outside of your network. On the other hand, wiki is different. Although both blogs and wikis are sharing information to the public, but all users in wikis can be editors and the page is no longer personal. Besides editing the page, wiki users also can create a new page while other users can add or delete things. Many companies would like to use wiki as an collaboration tool. According to Wikipedia, " A study of corporate wiki users found that they could be divided into 'synthesizers' and 'adders' of content. Synthesizers' frequency of contribution was affected more by their impact on other wiki users, while adders' contribution frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their immediate work". A company's managers and stakeholders can make changes easily through wiki. It is a common used tool for project planning and management. If there is a option to leave feedback like blogs, people will enjoy it more because they can still have their opinions on wiki even though it might not be acceptable. As we can see, people can get information from blogs and wikis, but they are just playing different roles as visitors (blogs) and editors (wikis).