Blogs Vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis both allow us the ability to convey our thoughts on the Internet. What used to be personal journals or autobiographies are now blogs and wikis containing the same information.  Privacy and secrecy is now an option. You elect to dismiss yourself of this option once you decide to post on the Internet for the world to see.

The main difference I would consider between blogs and wikis is the level of control on the content produced. Blogs are personal and therefore allow you to actually be the author of the work and you have censorship on what you want submitted. Wikis on the other hand is more so used for collaborative works allowing multiple individuals to contribute to the content being produced.

This issue of control has led to much debate on both blogs and wikis though. As Maureen Dowd mentioned in Stung by the Perfect Sting, "...the Internet is different than water-cooler gossip. It’s there for the whole world to see..." This has shaped the world of business and social life in a whole different form. In business, blogs are now able to judge and critic your brand without your company having one say in censorship. Their opinions if used in a collaborative effort can make or break your company or in an extreme case an individuals life as we have seen in the case that Maureen Dowd described of "Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who killed herself after getting cyber bullied by the mother of a classmate who pretended to be a teen suitor named 'Josh.'" With wikis, control has increasingly lessened for the contributors. According to John D. Sutter's article, Wikipedia: No longer the Wild West?, due to high concerns of falsely identifying individuals, wikis have placed restrictions on the feasibility of editing content by "assigning editors to some of its entries. These trusted volunteers likely would have to approve public edits before they're published to English-language stories about living people."

With this said, convergence is the essence of today's networked world. As previously mentioned, communication is instant. Somebody could blog about a major event in the matter of minutes via his/her wireless smart phone. This dominoes into the way we communicate through every aspect of life. It even seems today, that if your business does not have a presence on the Internet or involve itself in any social media initiative, you are practically irrelevant.

Let's take a look into the future: a "photoshop wiki" in the making. This wiki allows people to post up photos that need to be edited, with instructions on what they want done. Individuals can now take the photo, edit it and then post back to share.