CT Biz Blogs

In the October 23rd issue of Northeast Magazine, a supplement of the Hartford Courant, Joel Lang wrote “Decoding the Blogosphere: Navigating Connecticut’s Expanding World Of Web Logs” (link is to online article).

It’s not an awful article; it does serve as an introduction, of sorts, to blogging. But, as is almost guaranteed in most mainstream media coverage of blogs, it concentrates on the personal journal variety. Apparently, Joel Lang discovered Connecticut Weblogs, talked to the folks behind that effort, and sampled some of the blogs listed on their site, focusing on the more off-beat ones. To be fair, I must say that most of the blogs listed on Connecticut Weblogs are the personal ones, and they are a very quirky lot.

Connecticut Weblogs is a great resource. They list on one site all the Connecticut blogs they can find. The site is automated — it checks their listed blogs hourly, and displays a bit of the content and an image of each blog. This helps readers find blogs, and it helps blogs because search engines look at inbound links (links from other websites) as an indication of the importance of that blog. That can help boost a blog’s position in the search results list.

When I first ran across the site, I was skeptical. There are blog spammers out there who will illegally “scrape” a site, and present content from another blog as their own. They do this as lazy way of getting content so that their blogs will look more authentic, and not like the ad-encrusted traps for the unwary that they actually are.

But Connecticut Weblogs is NOT that kind of site at all. For one thing, there are no ads on their site — this was my first clue (I catch on quickly). Reading Joel Lang’s article gave me even more information about them. They are providing a valuable service, and I thank them for it.

As far as the Hartford Courant article goes, it’s worth reading, and also worth checking out their blogging glossary.

But blogging encompasses much more than is dreamt of in the Hartford Courant’s philosophy (to abuse a line from Hamlet). Business blogging is coming into prominence, and in 5 years will be as ubiquitous as regular business websites are now.