So last night the 2008 South African blog awards took place in Cape Town. I’d like to state that I wasn’t up for the running so have no sore loser qualms. I’d also like to state that of all the past few years blog awards, this one certainly seemed the most well organised based on reports I’ve read today and the Twitter Tweets (which sounds ridiculous but anyway). Well done to the organisers and all those who won in their category.
My bone of contention is how traditional media basically took over from the smaller bloggers and won a vast array of the prizes. One of my favourite blogs, Ideate.co.za got me quite riled up this morning. The author of the post Andrew spoke about how he thinks that it’s a great thing that traditional media is winning blog awards and promoting the whole concept of blogging as it will create growth in the blogosphere due to exposure. Firstly I agree with the thought that traditional media such as Mail & Guardian and East Coast Radio creates more exposure for blogs and this is great. I don’t like the fact that they can be in the same category as anyone else who starts an amateur blog. The Ideate website speaks about how most of the contributors are focused on developing online businesses. I need to pose this question: If Andrew suddenly had a massive marketing corporate such as say Primedia coming into the area of his business would he be happy? He’d be very unhappy but I suppose it wouldn’t bother him that much because Primedia would be after bigger clients than his. Essentially they would cater for different markets and there lies my point
Herein though lies the problem, how can you categorise a blog that gets hundreds of thousands of hits, as it is prominently linked to from the Mail & Guardian website, with something like my site? Both blogs could technically be considered for the “Best new blog” award as they were started in 2007. The only difference is the fact that a site like Thoughtleader (which I personally love) is created by a team, has major finances behind it and is considered part of a company’s online strategy.
So here’s the final issue, how can you categorise a commercial effort with a hobbyist, community based effort? I think this is where the fundamental flaw of the blog awards for the year comes in. How can you have a “commercial” blog going up against that hobbyist blog for a category? It’s a David Vs Goliath in terms of web hits and potential voters.
I think the solution is simple, create categories for blogs that are somewhat more commercial in nature or part of a businesses online strategy. I think a lot of people aren’t even going to both enter the blog awards next year as there will be a feeling that a bigger company blog will automatically win. This sort of apathy doesn’t help the community and lets hope this doesn’t happen. A simple re-categorising needs to occur to create a better package.
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Thanks for reading my musings and linking to Ideate.
If Primedia entered the same space as Ideate, it shouldn’t make any difference because people don’t only read one blog. Our readers can read our blog and the big new one. We’re not really competing with them, are we?
There can definitely be new categories created next year in the awards, and I’m sure there will be. The process could also be changed to make the public vote count for less than the judges, which would mean that small blogs would have a greater chance of winning. However, that’s not what the community asked for this year (they generally reckon that judges are biased), and it also goes against the premise of the awards as a publicity generating thing. Making the public vote the important part means that blog owners point their readers to the awards page, and it exposes many other blogs to a new audience. If you make it all about what the judges think you don’t get that same affect.
Anyway, I’m sure the awards process will be open for some sort of public input next year, so be sure to voice your opinion to whatever channel is created.
Hey Andrew, thanks for popping past.
What I think I should have explained better was that if Primedia started to take your business you’d either be despondent or excited for the challenge to make yourself better.
Make more sense?