Blog Network Watch

According to Editorial Board chair Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, the group is having a blogjam to look at what’s wrong with Pajamas Media, some excerpts from their Blogjam:

Glenn Reynolds:

My thoughts on the site: (1) It’s too sterile and corporate-looking; (2) The logo — which I guess will be obsolete — is similarly sterile and corporate-looking — Pamela of Atlas Shrugged said it looked like the logo for a women’s health clinic; (3) I like the newsfeeds, but I agree with Jeralyn Merritt that they’re not optimized for the kind of things that bloggers want.

The page, overall, has too much mainstream news content. And it’s too short — keep scrolling with a blog, and you see new stuff. Keep scrolling with this, and it stops!

Tammy Bruce

After all, we’re here because of the natural success of the blogs which translated into traffic, which translates into advertising, money, hence more freedom, more success. As long as one (in our instance Pajamas) does not make the mistake of believing that getting bigger means changing. It does not have to be so. I’ve also heard concern about advertising money/income being a corrupting influence. It does not have to be so. Money is the thing that sets individuals free–it can be so with the blogosphere as long as we stay conscious of the decisions that are made when it comes to issues of conformity (which should be a banished concept) and control (we need to have some but with severe limitations).

Glenn Reynolds:

I’d like to help send traffic to a lot of blogs, via a rotating link system. We want to encourage the serendipity that’s part of the blogosphere’s charm. I’m not sure how well automated systems do that, though. I’ve used RSS, but I rely much more on email from readers and links that I find on other blogs.

Glenn Reynolds:

What’s excited me all along about this project was the plan to recruit blog-reporters around the world, especially in remote or third-world places that are usually ignored. We saw how powerful that sort of thing could be during the Indian Ocean tsunami, but we shouldn’t wait for disasters to report from the Third World. That’s what the Big Media folks do. And as someone with relatives in Nigeria, I can tell you that there’s lots more than makes the news.

Roger L. Simon

Glenn, regarding feedback and comments, we’ve been discussing that internally. We obviously want to avoid spam and junk comments, if that’s possible. One proposal is have everyone register for a nominal fee (say three bucks) with a credit card payment to one of several charities (not to Pajamas). That way people have identified themselves as real human beings… and given some money to something worthwhile. Our thought is they would be less likely to spew hate from whatever angle. What do you think?

My favorite quote of the batch is at the end of Glenn Reynolds’s first comment in this Blogjam:

I think that overall the Pajamas / OSM operation has relied too much on the services of consultants and experts. They know stuff, but the results tend to be, well, corporate and sterile. And don’t even start me on the “branding” experts. I hope the check hasn’t cleared yet. . . . .

Personally, when I think about what a blog network homepage should look like I think of something like 9rules or Weblogs, Inc. – Weblogs, Inc. is more of a corporate homepage that sometimes features content from within their network. I like the 9rules style of profiling recent posts, etc. Pajamas Media’s homepage doesn’t really represent who they are in my mind.. and certainly not the content of their bloggers. There’s also their old homepage at OSM.

Again, too many consultants. Follow your heart, validate it with you head – it will not lead you astray.

Originally posted on November 24, 2005 @ 4:02 pm

Instablogs releases a new design for India daily as well

Originally posted on November 22, 2005 @ 11:04 pm