Blog Preservation: Current Challenges and a New Paradigm

Blogging is yet another popular and prominent application in the era of Web 2.0. According to recent measurements often considered as conservative, as of now worldwide there are more than 152 million blogs with content spanning over every aspect of life and science, necessitating long term blog preservation and knowledge management. In this work, we present a range of issues that arise when facing the task of blog preservation. We argue that current web archiving solutions are not able to capture the dynamic and continuously evolving nature of blogs, their network and social structure as well as the exchange of concepts and ideas that they foster. Furthermore, we provide directions and objectives that could be reached to realize robust digital preservation, management and dissemination facilities for blogs. Finally, we introduce the BlogForever EC funded project, its main motivation and findings towards widening the scope of blog preservation.