Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are two forms of new media technologies that are impacting the communication of information through the creation of personal opinions and factual evidences. Both are driven by Web 2.0 technology and allow for communication and collaboration to a widespread audience. Blogs are created by individual users and it represents personal opinions and any other things of interest by the author. Wikis are formed by a group of people that contribute information to create a cohesive piece of work mainly for informative purposes. Both blogs and wikis enable communication and collaboration with people though it is done on different means. Blogs offers limited collaboration since only the author updates the content of a blog and communication is done through feedbacks of others. On the other hand, wikis deals with a high level of collaboration since contents are worked on by many individuals.

Blogs and wikis have generated information for the public and many people use them for quick and simple reference. Noam Cohen in his article about Wikipedia states that “it is the first reference point for many web inquiries.” For instance, if you search the phrase “how to…” you are most likely to get opinions from someone’s blog, and if you search for any word it most likely contain Wikipedia information as the top choice. The convergence of blogs and wikis can lead to more efficiency due to elimination of redundant information and more real time inputs from authors or contributors but they have different intentions, such as topics discussed and audience, and may not be practical. According to Kathy Gill’s research, “bloggers write about topics that matter to them” therefore their creativity is based on what they want to blog about. However, wikipedians would mostly focus on improving information based on prior group efforts.

It is important to note that anyone can be a part of blogs and wikis because they establish communities despite noticeable differences.


1. "Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People" by Noam Cohen, The New York Times, August 24, 2009. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/internet/25wikipedia.html?_r=1

2. How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? by Kathy E. Gill. Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem, May 2004. available from: http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf