How blogging failed the war in Georgia
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/echo_chamber.php

And the best reporting on Russia for the last decade:
http://exiledonline.com/

maybe it’s not 100% rational, but when I come to blockactive, it somehow doesn’t feel personal. The most important thing seem to be the categories, not the individual blogs. I read blogs for their individuality, not for their categorisation.

The frontpage does not really invite to browse for the individuals on that platform, I feel more like on a news platform.

But in the end, at least that is what my superficial view, it does also not appear to be a community of people trying to work together on different topics, but it’s just a bunch of bloggers somehow related to European topics on the same platform.

To find interesting European blogs, I therefor still would rather scroll through Nosemonkey’s EU blog directory than going to blogactive. From Nosemonkey, I at least get a nice personal evaluation of each and every blog, something I can agree or disagree with. That’s what I like about blogging.

However, as I said above, it is more out of feeling than out of rational consideration.

Thanks for your comments. If you could go deeper in your analyse, I’d be very interested.

About Blogactiv, here is how it works:

Once you have signed up, you get a wordpress style blog with usual features.

Then, we try to give you the maximum visibility thanks to the rss-based architecture of our blog platform.

A general homepage agregates every Blogactiv bloggers articles with a focus (‘Editorial Choice’) on one particularly interesting.

From this general homepage, you can browse articles by sections (Communications, EU priorities, etc.), bloggers and tags.

The same for language versions (English, French, German). Soon, there will be others.

As WPMU is an open-source platform, we are constantly developping it and trying to provide the best features for our bloggers.

Moreover, as I explained in my precedent comments, blogactiv bloggers articles are showing up on EurActiv.com and its network of partners’ websites accross Europe. It gives them quick visibility and reach an accurate readership.

I mean, if you open a blog on blogger, wordpress, etc., it will take you some time to get traffic and reach relevant readers.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

So far, it is not something that attracts me, especially because it doesn’t really look and feel like blogging.

Thanks for this interesting article. It’s true that the EU blogosphere is very limited, largely english-speaking and frankly not visibile in the media landscape.

One of the objective of Blogactiv is to develop and federate a multilingual communauty of blogs on European affairs. Until now, we managed to get bloggers in French, English and German. Bloggers are mainly attracted by our blog platform because they can reach visibility thanks to the integration of Blogactiv to EurActiv.com and its network of partners’ websites accross Europe. Btw. Some existing EU bloggers have open a second blog on Blogactiv only to republish their original articles on our blog platform.

Next step for us is to develop Blogactiv in each Member States in which EurActiv.com is established that is mainly Eastern Europe – where I am convinced there is a real potential.

RZ – A fine one to talk – you haven’t updated in three weeks! (Heh!) – How come I’m a large blog, though? I’m just one guy with not enough spare time, just like everyone else.

Nanne – Yep, true, that. I’ve been invited onto far more discussion shows thanks to the UK aspect of the blog than the EU one – and to far more events. It’s becoming increasingly standard in British and American politics to invite a few token bloggers along – whereas in EU politics it remains a rarity (though I did get invited to the launch of the French EU presidency in London a couple of months back, and did get asked to guest post at Margot Wallstrom’s place, though nothing came of it – more due to my laziness than anything).

Then again, we need some perspective. The sort of US bloggers who get invited to the conventions are pulling in a bare minimum of tens of thousands of readers a day. Between ALL EU-focussed blogs (including the high traffic eurosceptics), we couldn’t manage that sort of readership. Even by UK blog standards I’m a pretty small operation these days, not even second tier (where I used to be, 2-3 years back, when I had more UK coverage and the pond was smaller) – and now only get the occasional invite thanks to past glories. I’m only considered one of the bigger blogggers in EU blogland because there’s so few of us, and I’m one of the longest running.

In other words, little wonder the EU institutions are mostly failing to engage with us – we’re tiny.

The funny thing is, that would be completely normal for a prominent US blogger. Which shows where we are at.

All the same… good stuff.