Near a month ago, Marisa over at Apartment 2024 callled my attention to the Metroblogging network: multi-author blogs based in various cities, woven into a multi-continent tapestry of blogs, authors, and bulletin boards. In her inimitable style, Marisa registered herself as a possible starting point for a Philly metroblog. I was quick to follow, but the network needs a quorum of 10 authors before said site can be launched. According to this evening's email update, 7 are confirmed, 3 are still awaiting confirmation, and a few more writers would certainly be welcome, even if those 3 "maybes" convert themselves to "yes" status.
Now, Philly clearly has an active and vibrant blogging network (she says, posting upon one of the most powerful pieces of evidence to that effect). But, considering that I've been blogging for close to a year, and I only found out about these networks in the last month, I've been wondering whether Philly's blogging networks are a smidge insular. What harm could there be, I wonder, in having current blog networks exist simultaneous to a Philly Metroblog? None that I can see.
So, if anyone else is interested in committing to three posts weekly on that forum, click here to register. Cross-linkage is sure to abound.
Not to point fingers but...
I feel the need to disagree: I don't think the Philly blog community is that insular - just take a look around Philly Future or the greater blogging community and you will see plenty examples of bloggers linking outside of Philadelphia as a matter of course - and with huge blogrolls to boot :)
This calls to mind the same marketing problem all of Philadelphia has - do folks outside of Philly know what a terrific blogging community we have here already? And how can we let the world know?
One major cause of us being so hard to find was that Google didn't return our list of Philly blogs in search requests until just recently. Google has a huge impact on whether you get noticed or not. Just tremendous influence. Our domain name was actually banned by Google due to misuse of a former owner of it. They fixed that error and now we are far easier to find.
One way to help immediately is to to share our blogroll with as many folks as you can. We need to spread the word about each other.
Beyond that though - back to Metroblogging - it is always great news to hear of a new blog planning to cover Philly :) If Metroblogging Philly turns into a great Philly blog - we will be sure to pull its headlines here as we do everyone else in our community aggregator. Philly Future grows as our regional web grows.
philly blogs
I stand (sit?) corrected
Karl-- You're right to challenge my use of "insular" as a descriptor. Chalk the poor word choice up to a case of late-Sunday sleepies. Your analogy to marketing---and the shared challenge of increasing awareness for all of Philly's neglected wonders, including the blogging---is much closer to the concept I couldn't find the words to express last night. My apologies for the poor choice of words, but one of the things I most enjoy about conversations in comment-boxes is that it allows me the opportunity to absorb someone else's feedback and better refine my own thinking.
dragonballyee--My tour of other Metroblogs hasn't yet revealed any formatting decisions "that get my back up," but only time and experience will tell on that score. As for the value of homegrown sites and Philly's role as a blogging capital: I don't at all wish to suggest that I think of a Philly metroblog as a replacement for Phillyfuture. It's already become a regular part of my net-surfing routine. Instead, I'm wondering if a Philly Metroblog could be a viable supplement to Phillyfuture and its blogroll. For better or worse, I learned about Metroblogging before I stumbled my way to here. So if a Philly Metroblog provides another entryway for folks into the richness of Philly's blogosphere.... I'm hopeful that will be a good thing.
I jumped on, because...well,
I jumped on, because...well, it could be fun. I've been living in Philly for a year and a half with no connections to any schools; and I still see the city as an outsider.
May as well dive in.