SA Blog Awards 2009 |

Apr

SA Blog Awards 2009

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To Blog or not to blog?

That is the question.

There is a growing trend moving away from blogging to “micro blogging” using tools such as Twitter and Hootsuite as an application. With that in mind and I attended the SA Blog Awards 2009 on the 3rd of April 2009 and met up with few of South Africa’s noteworthy bloggers. While I was at the event, I had a few questions running around in my head namely:

What is a blog? How did it all start? Does a blog add value?

How did it all start?

In 2004, the first known blogger was Justin Hall who was a freelance journalist who wrote reviews for game conferences. He blogged while he was a student at university.

Blogger

The first known Hosted blogs namely Blogger was started by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan co-founders of Pyra Labs, creators of the world renowed Blogger whom Google later bought out.

Back at home in South Africa Reuben Goldberg had a regular tech feature on radio since 2005 titled 5fm Blog Jockies, this tech slot showcased bloggers, rated them and gave blogging some exposure this was the first time I heard about blogging. Reuben now has a podcast feature on Classic Fm feature titled the “Internet Economy” where he interviews the “Movers and Shakes” in the Information Technology industry.

There are various types of blogs namely:

Blog: a with journal type entries with comments urban sprout
Photoblog: with mainly photos with text daily photo
Vlog: video blog eg: on the couch
Mp3 blog: music post with visitor comments
Podcasting: audio sound bites eg: Reuben Goldberg’s Internet Economy

There are blog search engines namely:
Afrigator
Anatomu

Microblogging

has become quite popular with sites like Twitter, Friendfiend, Hootsuite

There are personal blogs like Imod.co.za that are relevant and add value and some that are like reality tv giving updates on their personal lives i.e work relationships, internet woes, rants on poor service delivery (hellopeter.com) by certain products/brands eg: banks and compliments and recommendations on certain products.
Business blogs like Mg/Thought leader offers discourse on IT trends, new products and opinion polls. Do they offer value, yes they do.
I find many solutions to problems via blogs.

Blogs on video camera, cellular phones and broadband products offer first account experiences with the product and expose trends in faults on certain products.
You may research a product in this manner before buying it, by what people have to say about it, that’s a prime example of conversational marketing.

There has been a great build up to this year’s Blog Awards generating much hype online and also some opposing views to the Awards.

SA Blog Awards 2009

History of the Awards
This is an annual event and has been taking place since 2005. he awards gives reconition to bloggers for their efforts in regularlyl updating their blogs and keeping it current as well as relevant to SA. Pass prizes have included vuvuzela’s, pot plants and gift vouchers to mention a few.

I caught up in Miguel Da Santos,the webmaster of this years SA Blog Wards website who gave me some first hand insight into the awards. The judges for this year’s event included.

The event was organised by Huddleminds and Dave Duarte welcomed guests at the reception area.

Sponsors:

Afrigator

24.com
Encyclodia
Quirk

Tyler Reed from Jozi to Mc the event pic

Brandon Golding was in peak performance as he creating a energy while taking photos of the evens. pic
Prizes up for grabs were voucher hampers, iPhones
The event was a good meetup as well for online peers to meet offline.

Catch the results of the winners and runner ups here