Richard MacManus offers a different way of looking at motivations for blogging and studying blogging patterns - through his article "that drafts guidelines for a Fractal Blogosphere, and suggests that it be used as a measure of scale in the weblogging world. The goal is to help bloggers, particularly new ones, easily fit into a suitable blogging pattern." [link via emergic.org]

Read the whole piece - and his lead-in post - Fractal Web Applied to Blogging, where he summarises Chris Lydon's interview with Tim Berners-Lee, explaining the idea of the fractal Web, and a follow-up post on the Meaning of Fractals - in which he says : "the main point of my Fractal Blogosphere post was to try and suggest a new approach to blogging. You don't have to blog just to become popular (as is the only option if you live by the Power Law); you can derive just as much if not more pleasure from writing at the scale or level that fits your situation. Each level has different challenges and rewards. My idea says that there are gradations of motivation for blogging, which the power law in it's black/white harshness does not recognize (it can't, because it's a law not a social prescription). In the end, all blogging is pretty much the same - self-similar - but in reality there are differing levels of scale at which people can participate in the blogosphere. Why not embrace that?"

I quote an excerpt :

"I believe the Fractal Web concept is a better guide to living on the blogosphere than the power law, because it gives bloggers (and new bloggers in particular) more options on where and how to focus their writing efforts.

My Fractal Web concept for the blogosphere outlines 5 levels of involvement. These 5 levels are defined by audience quantity, but you can also think of it as gradations of motivation. The aim when using this system is not to become popular, which is by definition the only way you'll succeed if you measure yourself by the power law. The aim of my proposed Fractal system, which I'll call the Fractal Blogosphere, is for bloggers to find the level of structure that they feel most comfortable in. So without further ado, here's my draft 5 Fractal levels for bloggers:

10 - Personal Blogger. Your blog is designed to communicate with a very small and highly targeted group of people. Examples: blogging to keep in touch with your family; friends blogging personal things amongst themselves; a project team. The word 'personal' isn't quite right - but I want to convey that the people at this level personally know their readers.

100 - Social Blogger. Your audience is 100 or less, you have a core group of readers who share your interests and who tend to blog about the same topics as you do. Your writing is personal and conversational and your group sometimes leave comments on your blog or trackback you. You may not know your readers in real life, but you share a an affinity of interests with them.

1000 - Community Blogger. There are a number of options at this level. Maybe you're a Citizen Blogger who is writing for a community of readers - e.g. a Howard Dean blogger. Or you could still be basically a social blogger, with an increased audience - but you don't converse with all of your readers because there are now too many of them. At this level, your writing output needs to be adjusted to take into account the less conversational nature of your relationship to your readers.

10,000 - Broadcast Blogger. I'm not sure 'broadcast' is the right term, but I'm using Clay Shirky's term for a blogger who has a large network of readers and who therefore cannot interact with them as on the 100 or 1000 levels. Typically this is what is currently known as an A-List blogger, who publishes their ideas knowing that a large audience will consume them.

100,000 - Celebrity Blogger. This is someone whose every single idea or meme will be picked up by their readers and analysed. I'm thinking here of (for want of a better word) famous people whose blog output will be subjected to a large amount of scrutiny - people such as Howard Dean, or Tim Berners-Lee, or David Bowie if he ever decided to blog (and wouldn't it be great if he did!).

I'd like to see this list of Fractal levels expand out to 10 to give it even more breadth and scale, but right now - at short notice - I can only think of 5 levels. Also the audience numbers may not match up entirely, but the point is each level is defined by quantity of readers."

I like this idea -  it offers another way of examining why you blog.  I'd guess that there may well be more than 5 levels.  I seem to fall somewhere around the Community blogger fractal.  Interesting when you introspect on your own motivations to blogging, the type of blogger you'd like to be, the sorts of conversations and dialogues you want with your audience.   

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