It's time again for the Bloggies, a blog awards ceremony that's been written about before here by my predecessor Joe. I tell you, if there's one thing that guy's got to learn, it's how to form his own opinions and stick to them.
I don't feel as strongly about the Bloggies as Joe does, but I don't think it's healthy to get overly excited about them. I'd probably feel differently if I had been nominated, or even stood a chance, though.
It's just that awards ceremonies of any kind are skewed towards the candidates that are already the most popular. You've got to be popular enough to be nominated, and the herd mentality tends to dominate when voting, too. Just like Senior Superlatives in high school or the Oscars. And don't even get me started on what an endless plastic sh*t parade the Grammys are, year in and year out.
Winning a Bloggie seems to me to be like winning the Mister Universe title. I mean, it's an honor to be chosen and all, but Earthlings kinda have the home-court advantage.
The blogosphere is so huge and growing exponentially every day -- and while all the nominees for the Bloggies are good, who's to say that they are really the best? There are a lot of blogs out here in the blogosphere, and even from down around the rear end of the long tail, I can tell you that some folks are getting the short shrift.
Now that I've thoroughly sucked the fun out of them for you, I still think you should check 'em out. There's bound to be some good blogs in there that you haven't heard of, and any chance to fill up the old RSS reader is a good chance.
And you can also see that a couple of AOL's own have been nominated this year!
Our very own Jamie Mottram has been nominated for 'Best Sports Blog,' for starters. I don't know a damn thing about sports, but I'll tell you this: Jamie Mottram has become a great friend of mine here at AOL, and he writes a hell of a blog, all topics aside. He also holds himself to impossibly high standards of hygeine and is devastatingly handsome according to several sources. Check out Mister Irrelevant, and give it a vote if you are so inclined.
Tom Osborne is an art director here at AOL. He designs all kinds of stuff -- the People Connection page is about to look a lot different, and he will be the one responsible for it. I think it'll be a good thing. After hours, he owns/edits/administrates Twangville, a blog about country, alt-country, folk ... pretty much any music that twangs. Check it out, vote for it, visit often.
What do you think of the Bloggies, or blogging awards in general? Who would you nominate if you could?
8 comments:
The "Check out Mister Irrelevant" link is not working.
Krissy
http://journals.aol.com/fisherkristina/JoyToTheWorld
http://journals.aol.com/fisherkristina/SometimesIThink
I agree with all you said, especially when I realised that your frined, the only link we could open, was not even an AOL blog! Ah! you are so funny Jeff
Valerie
http://journals.aol.co.uk/iiimagicxx/surreality/
Thanks for the catch, friends -- fixed the link.
I'm not sure what to think when I hear that the AOL journals nominated are AOL Editor's.
Ooo, I can't wait to check out Twangville ... that is right up my alley!
LORI
Who I am… underneath it all:
http://journals.aol.com/scotthlori/DiscoveringMe
Precious Metal (A Spiritual Journal)
http://journals.aol.com/scotthlori/PreciousMetal
Congrats to them all... It's nice to see AOL blogs getting some love on teh innertubes.
-Dan
http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/
(a non-Bloggie-blog for the non-Bloggie-bloggers. And, as always, a fat-free snack).
I believe in praise and awards are high fives in a good way. Unfortunatley, exposure has much to do with who wins the bloggies. People vote by loyalty and time invested. If the grand audience was aware of a specific blog they will get more votes because the readership was there. The better blog can get nominated but without an audience whose invested time following your entries, you will loose out. I believe the final voting process can only find fairness is if 50% relied on experts opinion and then the other half the audience.
I tried to pound this into Joe's head, but he never did pick up where I was heading with it...maybe you'll figure it out.
We need to start sweeping these award ceremonies. You shouldn't be out here advertising for Wonkette to win another award... you need to be working to kill that whore.
Now,that sounds harsh, but you don't want to be the Milk Bone in a dog-eat-dog world. We're the largest ISP, we should have the most bloggers, and we should DOMINATE those awards. Maybe you techie types just have no soul, but you should be offended when non-AOL people win Best Blog awards.
If I were Leonsis... I'd walk into AOL Community's cubicle area and drop an offhand motivator like "Everybody take your stuff home... if we take at least 50% of those awards, you can all come back Monday and have your old desks again." As Pol Pot said, "nothing motivates like a good kick in the ass."
You, Joe, Jamie, John, Susan, and everyone has been working on Journals for years... and, to this day, not a single one of us has created any sort of a buzz.
I went by Huffington Post the other day, just to see what I'm doing wrong. It featured a one paragraph lead and a link. That's it. That style is shared by almost all the "top" bloggers, and I'm amazed anyone would even bookmark it.
Now, AOL had to go off-campus to staff its Fanhouse project, but the AOL (non-staff) sports blogger comminuty was only 10 deep anyhow. There have to be hundreds of regular AOL Journals to choose from, and one of them has to be better than "George Bush offends a deaf guy... check here____."
I pretty much like everyone I meet who works at AOL. I'd be very happy if Jamie won an award. I'd be happier if some of us Nobodies were nominated.
I'd be unhappy- for both AOL staff and all the Nobodies here in Journalslavia- if we all worked on something since 2003, and together we all failed to generate enough heat to knock off somebody trying to f**k a manatee.
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