One of the established methods of facilitating online communities is to have some kind of user profile or identity tool, to help set the context by giving some background behind the names in the discussion. Often with a mugshot as well.
But when you are a member of multiple communities, creating and updating a profile in each space can seem like a wasteful duplication of effort, leading to out of date, terse or missing profiles.
This is one of the ways in which blogs and communities can work well together because if you are a blogger, then all you need to put in your various profiles is a link to the blog and that will probably serve as a richer, more informal and current type of introduction. If a new member joins a network I’m involved with, I’m quite likely to subscribe to their blog for a while whereas if they only have a static homepage or profile, then after the first glance it may never get checked out again. So my suggestion here is that blogs can help new members to integrate themselves into communities more quickly, and that would be a net benefit to both.
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Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
I fully agree. Only wondering if it may not be embarrazing to unsubscribe after some time?? And what happens to large communities, do you take the time to add all those. When I was a blogmentor, I did not want to add some other blogs, because I rather try to reduce my blogs to below 50.
Another thing which came to my mind in relation to blogs and communities is that it can be part of the community ‘norm’ to have a blog- or not- and what type of blog- what to blog about. So a cop can stimulate its members to start one.