Should Blogging be Private or Public or Both?

As has been mentioned before, there are a variety of reasons why people blog.

Some people Blog to communicate with others; some people Blog for themselves but don't mind others reading what they say; some people Blog to communicate with everyone, or as many people as possible, to share thoughts and opinions.

Should a Blog be public or Private? Does it matter?

Some people say that there is no point to Blogging if its not publically available, they suggest that the simple act of puting information on the web means that you should want that information to be available.

I can't say that i entirely agree with that though.

Blogging software allows three levels of privacy, private, public and unlisted.

"The most private blog is password-protected. The most public blog is listed by the user’s blog service and will be easily found by the search engines. An unlisted blog is less likely to be found but it is not fully private; it is unlisted by the blogging service’s directory (similar to an unlisted phone number.)" (Nardi & Schiano)

Some of my Blogs are completely public, but most of my Blogs are in the unlisted category. I give the web address (URL) to the people i don't mind viewing them, but i don't have them listed anywhere, and they are not searchable by Google.

Why? I can't really explain it, i guess i find that for me what i Blog about doesn't need to be seen by most people, its not a big deal if they find it, but I'm blogging to a particular audience, and they are the people who have the link to my Blog.

This Blog is half public, half unlisted, its listed on the Swansea Learning Lab website, however, its not listed by the blog provider, nor is it directly searchable in Google.

The intended audience of this Blog are Swansea University Staff, however, the Learning Lab itself is listed on the main University website, and people outside the university are aware of its existence.

Should this Blog be opened up to a wider audience? What do you think?


Should Blogging be Private or Public or Both? I think that an answer is beginning to become apparent, it depends on the audience of the Blog whether it should be public or private.

There may be very personal reflective writing that happens on a Blog, that perhaps will only be shared with a small number of people, a tutor, family, good friends, or even class groups. This might be private with the audience having to log in to view, or unlisted.

Whereas debating topics from your lecture might have either an unlisted status, with really only the class members paying attention, or be completely public, and still have mainly just the class members commenting.

I don't mind that some Blogs are private, or unlisted, and others are Public. I don't think there is an advantage to all Blogs being public, it really depends what you want to get out of a Blog.

At the recent Enter the Blogosphere session, people asked if there was a list of Blogs that staff at Swansea write, available somewhere. I had to admit that i am not aware of such a list, nor of who exactly is Blogging here at Swansea. I know there are some people, probably more than I am aware of. We'd certainly be interested in finding out how many people have Blogs?, what they use them for?, if anybody is Blogging with their Lecturing?


People are interested in other peoples Blogs, in what other people have to say, sharing this information would perhaps be classed as making Blogs public, but then if you don't want your Blog to be public, you don't have to let the world know about it.


What do you think? Should Blogging be Public? Private? Both? Does it matter?

Would you like to see other staff members Blogs?

Would you share your Blog?