8. BLOG – OHNOTHEYDIDNT

Ohnotheydidnt is a livejournal community where celebrity gossip is posted. In order to post and comment you have to join the community by having a livejournal, however this is free to do. If you don’t want to do this, you can just read the community for free regardless. The community is updated on a regular basis by people from all other the world, and it shows how much people can talk about things that interest them, and how the internet has allowed for niche communities such as this to be set up. The technology involved is the internet as this is an internet community.
The main people who use this blog are females aged 15-25 who are interested in celebrity gossip. Although the majority of these people come from America, as it is accessible from all over the world it means there are also plenty of members from the UK and Canada. This is because they are the age most interested in celebrity gossip; particularly in their downfalls as it lets them feel better about themselves and in some cases can be humorous. The site is constantly updated so the audience always know what’s going on. This very different to how it used to be. Before gossip lovers depending on magazines to update them with what was going on and had to be content with one fixed opinion weekly. Now, they can visit many websites, get plenty of different opinions, at regular opportunities, as well as with the increased feature of embedded video, for example Hilary Duff on Loose Women. There is also the chat feature, allowing you to have instant conversations with anyone all over the world, who is currently on the ohnotheydidnt page. This allows you to instantly discuss your views with people who are interested in the same thing as you.

The livejournal its self is simply laid out with the headline at the top which has 4 links incorporated into it – info, for more information on the community itself for example number of members (48,783 members and counting ), chat, where using “gabbly” you can have online instant messenger chats with anyone in the world who is on ohnotheydidnt at that moment in time, join, which leads you to a link to join the website in order to post and finally email, which gives you the sites email address (weeatcelebs@gmail.com). Underneath is the gossip, ranked chronologically, with the most recent first.

Livejournal is the main institution involved, as they provide the hosting site for the blog its self. In general though not many institutions are involved as it is a blog, which members of the public contribute to and there are no adverts. The gossip posted is about everyone and anyone, so in theory a company could start a gossip trail, ending up with their product on the site however this is quite unlikely.

This blog is an example of interactivity as the people who are involved can edit and post their own input on the website, immediacy as it is done through the internet, personalisation as the media is for a specific group of people – those interested in celebrity gossip and flexibility as the media can be accessed 24 hours a day. Democratisation can be seen as anyone can join in, as long as they have a livejournal putting in any news stories they may have seen, as well as commenting on other people’s stories, and so can convergence due to the fact that videos can be placed on the site. Diversification can also be seen, as the site is made for a niche audience who have a special interest in gossip. Reach can be seen as the site is on the internet, and anyone can access it from all over the world – since the 17th of September 2005, 44, 544, 377 people had visited the site (figure taken on 17/04/07), as well as fragmentation through the specialist subject being discussed on the website. Finally regulation, or the lack of, can be seen as anything can be posted, and this includes water marked images from sites such as Getty Images, for example Paris and Nicole on the set of the simple life.