Several days ago, I wrote a Why do I blog? blog post, as part of a meme floating around the blogosphere. In it, I asked five other bloggers why they blog. So far, Camille and Jaya have responded with very thoughtful posts. Jafabrit has a great post relating her blogging to her visual art. I hope you read all three posts.

The mirror question has also been catching my interest recently, why don’t you blog? Of course, I can’t go tag a bunch of blogs to ask that question, so it is a question I’ve been talking about with people on phone calls or at dinners. One reason many people don’t blog, is that they don’t know what blogging is, or how to get started. I’m always around for blogging classes and it looks like I’ll be teaching a few different classes over the summer.

A second reason is concern people have about controlling the impression that others form of them online. I touch a little bit on this in my post about collective identity formation. There is something permanent and easily searchable about what we post online and we do have to be careful about what we post. Many people talk about how kids often don’t think about possible implications about what they put on Facebook or MySpace.

Just as we can try to shape, but can’t control, the impressions that people form of us when we meet face to face, the same applies to impressions that people form of us based on what we post online. It is more complicated because so much of what we post online lacks the visual cues that people pick up on face to face. Yet the same issue applies. We can try to shape, but we can’t control the impressions others form of us, either online or off.

So, why don’t you blog? If it is because you don’t know how and want to learn, drop me a note. If it relates to impression formation, or something I’ve missed and you want to share your ideas, let me know.