There are many types of blogs. Many blogs are usually just text and occasionally some pictures. Some blogs feature artwork of various kinds, these are called (obviously) art blogs. Blogged.com can help you find great blogs of all types. Some blogs, called MP3 blogs, feature music that the poster has created and has made available for download. The Hype Machine, http://hypem.com, is one place to find music blogs that suit all music tastes. Podcasting is also another type of blogging that is becoming increasingly popular. Podcasts can be submitted to iTunes so that they can be made available to more people than just visitors to your blog. If you use Twitter or use Facebook status updates, then you are microblogging. The types of blogs that seem to be the largest group of blogs are photoblogs and video blogs.
Photography blogs (photoblogs) are the most popular blogs on the internet. Those blogs are blogs that feature pictures in every post with only a few sentences of commentary. LOLcats (http://icanhascheezburger.com/) and the whole Cheezburger Network (http://cheezburger.com/sites) is a photoblog that is posted by users. Another good site is Cake Wrecks (http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com). Jen, the woman who writes the blog, posts pictures of awful professional cakes that users submit to her and they usually revolve around a theme per post. She adds her own humorous reactions and commentary in each one of the posts. Most of them drip with sarcastic humor but every Sunday she posts her Sweet Sundays with well-done cakes, some of which reflects her nerdiness, as she calls it.
Video blogs (vlogs) feature videos that follow a pattern, like a regular TV show or they could be personal journal entries done with a camcorder. I and a former Independent staff member, Jon Gronli, created our own vlog filled with current (usually) movie reviews, TV show reviews and other things that interest us and our audience. We drew our inspiration from other successful vlogs out there. One such website, which contains a lot of vlogs from many different characters, is ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com. The site was originally just one guy, Doug Walker, whose popularity on YouTube with his 5 second movie reviews and his Nostalgia Critic reviews paved the way for more pop culture critics. On the site there are things like video game reviews, walk-throughs, movie reviews, pop culture discussions and many more interesting things by interesting and entertaining people who have fun doing what they are doing.
It doesn’t matter what kind of blog you want to do. Just keep in mind that there are blogs out there from which you can get inspiration. You also don’t have to limit yourself as to what and how you are going to set up your blog. As always, I hope this article proves valuable to newbies and advanced bloggers alike. If you have any questions or if you want to talk about blogging, my email is l-ocasio@neiu.edu and my blog, The Zaftig Latina Blog, is http://zaftiglatina.blogspot.com. For those who might be wondering, the vlog is called Green Valleyside Productions and can be found at http://greenvalleyprod.blogspot.com.