Sociologists are trying their taxonomy profiling on bloggers all over the conversations on the net. Apparently, most are American, male and Einselsgangers (cavalier seul), mavericks, lonely individuals writing off their frustrations in moments of solitary seclusion, caesuras of desperation. I think that there are a lot of people out there jealous of all the fun we have producing these rants of freedom :-)
Blogging is seen by some progressive academics (three years ago they would not touch the stuff afraid of a deadly career move) as an example of social media typical of web 2.0. But there is a wider perspective, there is more going on than just a new way of conversation. Grand Narratives are losing their authority to the crowd and disintegrate into micro-narratives (blogs), socio-narratives (wikipedia), nano-narratives (twitters, IMs, SMS), meta-narratives (feeds) and femto-narratives (tags, blogrolls, links). All of these decentralized narratives proliferate semantic entanglements which result in a flourishing memetic ecology (which academics will very soon make into a new discipline, probably called Semasiology. I'll will be candidate for the sponsored professor chair of course :-)
To say that this narratological revolution is WASP (acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) is bullshit (most of my friends are in the US, particularly West Coast and I can tell you for a fact, they are not WASP, although some wear white shoes ☺
Let me give you a peep at my RSS feed (it is public of course ☺
Dosh Dosh is a blog about ways to make money online. Topics commonly featured on this blog includes professional blogging, affiliate marketing, get-paid-to programs, advertising networks and social media monetization. Maki, the writer ia a Political Science and Philosophy student in Toronto, Canada. He says a lot of instructional material on How to get traffic and links from popular blogs. How to use blogrush and widgets for blog traffic.
Bloggingbits.com is from a very interesting and intelligently written blog of 23-year -old author in Pakistan; read his "Five ways to get bookmarked on Deli.cio.us"
And not everyone is male, although I must admit the majority is. But eMoms at Home founder Wendy Piersall is certainly one of the people I follow almost daily.
She is (like me) a fan of the idea that people should work from home and wrote the beginners guide to make money while blogging.
Blogging is also becoming more and more professional. There are a lot of team blogs popping up such as Problogger. They have just published the Top 5 timesavers for bloggers (their advice: write less and read more; I am trying to follow that rule, but not always easy, suddenly everyone in the world has so much to say after centuries of silence and reticence :-)
Dailyblogtips.com team blog gives SEO advice for blogs and just published 10 easy ways to improve internal linking.
I particularly like their blog on pajamas, but perhaps I am biased.
Does it not remind you of tribal times where people sat around the fire exchanging tools? The only difference: everyone wants his/her own tribe :-) (I'll join yours, if you join mine)
