After a long while i spent some time at Ryze yesterday.  So many guestbook entries and messages to respond to. Among them, Ton and Seb added me as friends, and i went over to their pages to leave a comment and add them as friends too.  After all, we have interacted through our blogs!  I spent some time at their pages, and through their friends, went on to many others.  Two observations i made (no hard figures here) :

• many bloggers seem to be joining Ryze - and those already there getting more active
• among them, Ryze 'rolls' are beginning to resemble Blogrolls

Makes me wonder about the nature of  'community' in blogging - each of us has built or is in the process of building our set of readers and commenters, we frequently leave behind comments at each others' pages and once in a while, send a private note to each other. Often we link back to others' posts - sometimes simply to acknowledge their value, at other times to build upon them and take them forward a little. 

Some use FOAF profiles, facerolls and other tools to help build a community around their blogs.  Often,we subscribe to RSS feeds from blogs without acknowledging to the concerned blogger that we are reading his/her blog - just assuming he or she will find out through sitemeters or other monitoring systems. 

There are some very obvious established blogger cliques built around shared interests, blogger ratings, etc.  And some community blogs too - though i see little collective or collaborative blogging happening there.  And there are many more in the process of connecting with people who share some interest or the other.   Some relatively new to this field of blogging, others who've been at it for a while and are yet to discover a community they really feel comfortable in, feel a sense of belonging with, and in some ways then, a community that can make their own world better.

My experience has been that bloggers i have connected more with have been those with whom i've had an exchange that goes beyond our shared interests in blogging as professionals. Softer,more human and sometimes less tangible characteristics like a certain piece of music,a quotation or poem,a flower in my garden, a book review,a wistful philosophical question - identity that goes deeper than my role as a marketing and research consultant.

I have often found myself looking at a Ryze profile of a blogger whose thoughts i connect with at some level.  Is this what networks like Ryze offer so well - more human faces, greater approachability, a 'lighter', less threatening atmosphere to connect in. As a result, greater scope for community building ?

And blogging can benefit from 'community' then - where there is a move from selling or pitching oneself - to exploring, discovering and learning.  Where there is a shift towards exploring ideas, collaborative learning and sharing minds in an integrated world and a trusted space. 

6:03:25 PM    comment []  trackback []