Blogs Vs Wikis

         We have seen so far in my class two types of new media communication tools, wiki and blog. While both are used in a collaborative manner a wiki allows users to create, modify and organize content on the web page and Blogs only allows an user or group of authorized users to modify and others can only comment on the post. Wikis are more useful for organizations because their members can work on projects by editing, adding, deleting content and communicating with other users like in the case explained on the article “ More On How To Build Your Own Wikipedia” by Margaret Locher on CIO.com. In this article she explains how Tony Pagliarulon a VP of application development, and his team chose to use a wiki in 2005 to develop a knowledge management system for the company he works for (IT vendor EMC). He needed a place to organize schedules, codes and other details and a wiki was the perfect tool. Blogs on the other hand have been use on a more personal manner like the article on the New York Times by Michel Wilson “Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid” where the Brooklyn community designed a blog to create awareness and post about issues going on in the neighborhood such as crimes.

        Another great feature that has grown out of the new media tendencies is convergence. This has allowed business to grow and adapt to the times and be able to reach to a greater audience. Nowadays people rather go on the internet than read a magazine or a newspaper and with the new technology and their great capabilities companies can advertise, offer other products like for example companies like Netflix that allows you to not only rent physical DVD movies but also stream online through many devices.

Blogs can be used for collaboration as I mentioned before as a tool for a community to voice issues ongoing, or an organization to post their opinions about products, services, procedures.

Last but not least Wikis have been used in all markets so I can’t think of another way a wiki can be useful besides commercial, educational, medicine, science, and many other fields that need for people to interact.