Blogs as a virtual pub?

Blogs are often thought as a way of building community.



People of similar, and often divergent, interests and points of view are brought together under the umbrella of various blogs. It's highly likely that many people are drawn to blogs coveing entirely different communities.



Just as people have many different interests, there are blog communities for virtually (pun intended) every taste.



Vicki Smith of Just In From Cowtown has used the analogy of "The Weblog as Digital Pub" to describe the community created by individual blogs.



Note that Vicki Smith's article has also appeared in The Blog Herald.



Vicki considers the blog community to be something larger than an isolated location on the internet. Instead, the blogger is either consciously or subconsciously building connections with other people.



"...even though it is seldom stated, the goal of a weblog is to attract, build, or reinforce a sense of community, a place where people come to feel a certain sense of comfort, a sense of belongingness when issues that are important to them are being discussed. Usually, but not always, that means a certain consistency of beliefs and ideas."



I can't even begin to do her blog as a pub thesis justice. Your best bet is to pub crawl your way over to "The Weblog as Digital Pub", and read the post for yourself. That's the only way to get the tremendous depth of her thought on the subject.



Vicki's Just In From Cowtown blog does a good job of community pub building. Her blog receives a strong level of comments from other "virtual pub crawlers".



I have her blog linked from my roller derby blog, so I have been reading Just In From Cowtown for awhile.



It's certainly about time I recommended her blog to my readers here.