Blogs and Wikis both enable communication of information by a person or a group. Both blog and wiki are an example of new media. Blog and wiki provide a platform for feedback. Difference is, viewers can post comments on a blog post. Whereas, Wiki enables users to edit the page collaboratively.
According to Grill, “some analysts suggest that blogs are poised to be the next generation opinion/editorial page.” Blog are usually created by a single author who shares their opinion on a topic or subject. Whereas, wiki are created by multiple authors who are sharing their knowledge on a topic of the subject. In his article Wikipedia: No Longer the Wild West?, Sutter states that Wikipedia will assign editors to approve public edits for some of its entries, such that the information on the Wikipedia is becoming more reliable. Blogs are usually updated intermittently. But wikis are updated all hours in a day since multiple authors can edit the page. Moreover, Blogs are meant for one-to-many communications, Wikis on the other hand are intended for many-to-many communication.
The word convergence suggests providing a platform for people to share their knowledge and opinions with other people. In today’s networked world convergence plays an important role because people often can find an answer to a question by searching the topic through search engines. According to the article A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?Rorschach pictures and common responses for each picture can be found on Wikipedia. Blogs can be used for collaboration between bloggers, where bloggers help each other to promote their blogs. Bloggers can collaborate by writing a post together by sharing their opinions on a topic. Just like how YouTubers collaborate with one another by showing up in other YouTubers' video.
A new use for the wiki is to collaborate with other social media. Wikipedia can collaborate with YouTube so as to display YouTube video on their pages.
Sources:
http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/internet/29inkblot.html?ref=business
You touched upon a great point about Blogs vs. Wikis when you mentioned that, "Blogs are meant for one-to-many communications, Wikis on the other hand are intended for many-to-many communication". Wikis are indeed created as a collaborative form of information. It's interesting how both can possibly have the same information on their pages, yet the information can be altered repeatedly throughout the day by editors of a Wiki. Also I recently started updating my personal blog and until now I didn't think of how bloggers help one another by promoting each other's blogs. I will definitely create a blogroll and link my friends blogs to my page. Collaborating in such a way is great for helping increase our exposure.
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