Blogs for Research

Are blogs merely the online rantings of people around the world, or is the Blogosphere more useful than that? Companies are now turning their attention to the Blogosphere in hopes of gleaning helpful information on the newest trends.

See: MSNBC's Reporting on Weblog Research

How interesting, that companies have been established to study the postings in the Blogosphere with complex computer programs designed to collect and analyze what is being discussed in what must be millions upon millions of blog entries. And why not? People of all ages post their complaints, comments, and general feedback on all manner of things in their blogs. It seems only natural that the next step in development research be in the direction of blogging.

What really stands out about Weblog Research is that individually, the opinions mean nothing. They are merely words written with a limited range, and on some occassions, blogs can become immensely popular. However, taken together, they form a rich and almost limitless source of knowledge about the likes and dislikes of various demographic groups. It is possible to take, for example, a sampling of the number of blog entries on any given subject and use that information to determine the level of interest in said topic.

I am reminded of studies done on termites and collective agents. A good example of this is termite mound construction. Each termite will go out and collect a small bundle of mud. It will then follow a path back to the developing mound and place this ball of mud on the pile. Looking at the actions of this sole creature, the collection and placement of a ball of mud means nothing in the grand scheme of things. But when used as data in conjunction with information about other termites in the colony, a complete image of how a termite mound is constructed can be formed. For academic completeness, it's worth noting that placement of the balls of mud is not random, in fact the termites place their mud balls based on the location of other mud balls and a small dose of pheromone. But you can easily see how collection of data on multiple blog entries can yield data on the Blogosphere as a whole.

With this knowledge in hand, it's tempting to think that we can sway the direction of research, but we must remember that the input into these programs comes from thousands upon thousands of users around the world. It would take a concerted effort to do this, and so all we can do is continue to write about what interests us most.