Similarities
- Both are used to communicate information about various topics (there are no topic constraints).
- Information posted on blogs and wikis can be edited.
- Both allow for community building.
Differences
- Blogs are usually run by individuals, while wikis rely on the collaborative effort of many people.
- Communities are built on blogs when people read, comment on, and link one another's blogs. On wikis, however, the sense of community emerges when people work together to expand, update, and edit the wiki.
- Content on blogs can only be posted and edited by the administrator, thus providing a very narrow and limited perspective on things. However, content on wikis can be edited by any registered user, each contributing their own knowledge and perspective on a topic.
- While blogs use HTML coding, wikis "favour plain text editing." (Wikipedia on Wikis)
Convergence in today's networked world
Convergence of old media and new media has become absolutely essential in the news industry today, because in order to "stay alive," publications (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast stations (tv and radio) must be able to compete with online entities that can publish news by the minute.
Melissa Gerry demonstrates the aforementioned beautifully in her article, "Celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media," a piece about the changing landscape of celebrity news. To put it succinctly, celebrity bloggers were able to effectively compete with [entertainment] news organizations due to their ability to get the news out earlier in the day (and with less commentary restrictions!). Nowadays, entertainment news organizations have online counterparts that publish celeb news as soon as they are press-released.
Newspapers and magazines also have online counterparts these days to maintain their readership. The New York Times, in addition to archiving their articles online, boasts a myriad of blogs, with topics ranging from politics, to economics, to fashion, to food, to technology, to the environment, etc. It's nothing short of impressive; and, to be honest, quite overwhelming.
Blogs being used for collaboration
Using blogs to collaborate is not entirely unheard of. Many blogs rely on the efforts of multiple contributors. Mashable, a blog about web 2.0 and social media, is one of them. Another is The Cut, New York magazine's fashion blog. The contributions of multiple bloggers leads to more updates, more perspectives, and more traffic.
A new use for wikis
This is a tough one, because wikis are used in so many fields now - politics, business, education - that I don't think there's much left to be done. Perhaps, we should expand wikis into the field of medicine so researchers can pool together their knowledge?
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