Blog Archetypes: Lumpers and Splitters
As most readers may know, I have been working on developing Archetypes that describe not only the types of content that surface through blogs but also for the different types of blogs themselves. Certainly, I am not the only one pursuing this line of thinking.
Previously, I've noted that one method to look at Blog Archetypes was a dissection of the Editorial Goals of the author(s) and the composition of the Entry Archetypes (see "Introduction to Blog Archetypes"). These two simple constructs provide a very broad base to move forward from in that they get at both the conversational nature of blogs as well as the underlying motivations.
A couple of weeks after that initial post, I came across some interesting thoughts from Jon Lessing, a decidedly more "business" approach to understanding blogging (see "A Different Take on Blog Archetypes"). Specifically, Jon was investigating the various business models that could prove to dominate in the long run.
Most recently, Suw Charman, recent addition to the Corante Team, has provided another high-level categorization worthy of note:
Marketing blogs - external, B2C blog, used to promote either the company or a product/service.
External blogs - used to communicate with the public, but not for sales purposes, for instance, in a consultation process.
Insider blogs - employee blogs, sanctioned but not controlled by the company they work for. (Sometimes disclaimed by the company they work for.)
Internal blogs - blogs used within a company to share knowledge, build communities, disseminate news.
Content blogs - public-facing blogs reliant on content to bring in either subscription or, more likely, advertising revenue.
I'll try to incorporate these classifications as I further my versions of the Blog Archetypes.