Mobile blog or known as Moblog is a form of new media publishing these days. With Moblog, bloggers are able to update their blog when they are away from the Internet to keep their readers updated. An example of blog that can turn into a Moblog would be Blogger (Turn any blog into a moblog - just like that! 2004). Issues concerning this newest trend would be publishing false pictures that causes huge misunderstandings among the society. For example, the Mongolian murder case that arises an impact towards Malaysia political institution. A picture of Altantantuya together with Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Najib Razak and Razak Baginda was clearly manipulated using a photo editing software by the public were posted on a blog and linked to other blogs as well, where it drew large attention to all sort of criticism (Politics 101 Malaysia 2007).

Vlog
Another new form of media publishing that is widely used is Vlog. Vlog simply stands for video blog. A Vlog consist of video streaming community where communities are able share videos with each other. An example of a successful Vblog would be YouTube. One of the many reasons why Youtube is gaining popularity is because it provide users with wide range of videos and easy browsing feature (Why YouTube Works 2006). Other than that, YouTube serves a role in the political constitution where election candidates in America publishes relevant videos of their political point of view to draw and to convince their potential voters (Jarvis 2007). Youtube provide an official channel especially for 2008 United States presidential election (O’hear 2007).

Obama political campaign on Youtube
(Sourced from: http://youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom)

One of Barrack Obama's video posted on YouTube
(Sourced from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acI9u-6I8bs)

Print newspaper
(Sourced from: www.cnn.com/WORLD/9610/09/diana.hoax/)

VS.


Online

Designing for online and print varies from one another in terms of the layout and amount of information provided. According to Nielson (1999), “In print, your document forms a whole and the user is focused on the entire set of information”. The set of information on print are easily read while information online is divided into sections pertaining one section to another. Besides that, readers prefer to read shorter post online because the percentage of readers reading online is 25 per cent slower than reading prints like newspaper (Nielson 1999). Often readers will browse through the online pages without having to read them thoroughly because they only need to get the information that they want (Morkes & Nielson 2007). Therefore, blogs must be short and precise. However, different readers have different reading preferences as their level of making meaning out of the text depending on “… the socio-cultural context of the text production” (Walsh 2006, p.25). On the other hand, reading trends are now changing where “… the written text is no longer structured by linguistic means through verbal connectors and verbal cohesive devices” (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1998). Instead, it is depending on the page structure including the elements, visuals and graphic presented on the page itself (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1998).

Blogs are divided into a few categories, giving readers and bloggers varieties to suit their preferences. As blogs are widely categorized, there are a few main blog categories before they are broken down into smaller categories.

a) Personal Blog
-This blog consist of the blogger’s personal views on a subject matter. In general, most teenagers and young adults prefer this type of blog because they are more interested in sharing the event that occurs in their daily life (Blogging the Phenomenon 2006). One example of a personal blog would be by Kinkybluefairy

b) Community Blog
-A community blog exists in an existing community where the authors sometimes are not aware that they are blogging. This type of blog exists on Myspace (Identity in the Blogosphere 2006).

c) Corporate Blog
- This type of blog is usually for business purposes. Entrepreneurs’ uses blogs to engage with their customers and at the same time to gain more profit as establishing a blog is easy and free. For example, Cuppacakes promote products to their potential customers on their blog.

One of Stickgal's drawing on her blog
(Sourced from http://stickgal.blogspot.com)

Most blogs these days are combination of different styles, format and attracts different types of audience. This is caused by the audience’s different preferences and interest. The style of publishing blogs changes as the time goes by. Today, blogs can be accessed and updated through mobile phones and this blogging trend is called moblogging (Blogging Goes Mobile 2003). However, one of the ways to identify a unique blog is to observe the types of entries, which are being posted on the blog itself.

Blogging Community
A blogging community, also known as blogosphere is a network connecting bloggers from all over the world together. It is possible to create a blogging community by the existence of hyperlink, chat space, comment post and also tags on the blog itself. One of the existing blogging communities would be MyBlogLog. Blog authors joining this blogging community are able to monitor their readers (Kirkpatrick 2006). Besides that, MyBlogLog helps authors to interact with other bloggers sharing the same interest.

MyBlogLog blogging community logo
(Sourced from: http://www.mybloglog.com/)

According to Young (2005), there is at least one blog created within a day. The blogs are still increasingly growing with a total of more than 175,000 blogs created every single day, approximately “1.6 million posts per day and over 18 updates a second” (Welcome to Technorati n.d).

Based on a comparative study following Social Media trends by Universal McCann, the result found that China is dominating the number of blogging community worldwide with 42 million in total (Weiss 2008). On the other hand, blogging community in Korea and India are likely to read blogs that covers within their personal interest (Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia n.d). As for blogger community trend in United Kingdom, technology blog is the most popular blog genre with 21 per cent out of 100 per cent blog genres (Brown 2006).


There are three types of blogs that are common in Europe and Asia which are community blog, personal blog and also corporate blog. However, the blogosphere for non-community blogs are divided into technology, politics and world events, arts, sports, personal and others (Identity in Blogosphere 2006).

As blogs are now becoming popular, entrepreneurs and politicians tend to use blogs to attract their audience in each respective field. Malaysian political blogger like Jeff Ooi are among other bloggers whom discusses issues regarding politics, keeping his readers updated on political concerns surrounding the country. Business blog’s main purpose is to gain profit. Example of a business blog that provide profit for both authors and subscribers would be Advertlets.