To Blog or to Multiply?

To blog or to go “Friendstering”/“MySpace-ing”/“Multiplying”/“Facebooking”???

When it comes to online usage, most people go for social networking because it allows them to interact with others. Unlike blogging, which is seemingly a solitary affair, being on a social network is like having an all-in-one online service.

A social networking service already combines email, blogging, and even instant messaging, with more perks. Through social networking websites, users can meet other people, stay in touch with their friends, and with the current setup of social networking services, even play games and use and add other applications.

On the other hand, blogs do offer a measure of interaction. If you install widgets like Entrecard or MyBlogLog’s visitor widgets, you will see the viewers and visitors of your blog. The comments are also there to help you interact with the blog’s owner, or if you’re the blog owner, it will help you interact with your readers.

These tools are not as convenient for the user as the integrated tools and services in the social networking websites, but they sure give a measure of interactivity.

The difference between blogging and using a social networking site is the crowd and your intention in being on that website. Social networking is all about contacts, friendship, and interaction, while bloggers tend to blog because they have something to say.

It all just depends on what you actually want to do: would you want to connect with friends, or do you just want to put up your work and communicate with people, for your own pleasure and it won’t matter whether they view your blog or not?

Either way, the main point is still communication.

Yet you can also integrate both kinds of websites/services, if you are someone who would like to reach a wider audience. You can blog your thoughts, then you can also work on reaching your friends and a broader audience through posting the links to your blog on social networking websites.

It is interesting to note that social networking-based blogs are not exactly considered authoritative. On the other hand, there were quite a few blogspot/Blogger blogs that had been catapulted into industry greats even with just the blogspot.com URL. Amazing factoid.

So before you want to go into either service, you better ask yourself, what do you want to do, really, and which would make you achieve it?

This is Lorie, signing out!