Results tagged “blogs”

Catalin asks a bunch of bloggers, myself included, three questions: which was the biggest story of the Romanian Internet in 2006; what will be 2007 known as — if 2006 was the year of the blog; and what personal plans or projects I have related to Internet.

Because I am certainly not an Internet industry insider — nor an acknowledged outsider — I don’t think I can give a competent answer. However, I'll tackle the first question from a subjective angle that may be of interest.

For me, 2007 was the year the first entrepreneur envisioned and developed an Internet product not as a web site/Internet service, but as a brand. I am talking about Metropotam¹, an innovative city-guide weblog about Bucharest, whose identity and tone of voice were specifically designed for a certain audience.

Common knowledge says that Internet is an elusive beast whose quirky nature makes communities hard to build in any other way but from a grassroots level, with spectacularly limited control over the process, relying only on the code, the looks and a couple of coarse-grained marketing tools.

Metropotam employed some pretty sophisticated tools (brand rhetoric and an avatar, to mention a couple) to achieve differentiation and emotional bond.

And it worked. Meeting one of Metropotam’s founders at a cup of tea a couple of days ago I was happy to hear that the stats are good and climbing.

¹ Full disclosure: Metropotam — the brand — was developed by Brandient.

Bloggers, one at a time

Antonio started it (he claims he got tagged with it by God, actually), I got it from Eduard and I'll pass it over to Dragos.

The list looks like this:

01. Antonio Eram
02. Ciprian Stavar
03. Radu Ionescu
04. Cristi Manafu
05. Andressa
06. Catalin Tenita
07. Ionut Buzoianu
08. Eduard Koller [previous]
09. Cristian “Kit” Paul [current]
10. Dragos Novac [next]

Rules: when tagged, post at least the list tail (if not all the list) comprising the number & name of the blogger that tagged you, your number & name and the number & name of the blogger you're tagging.

Let's see how this goes — during our life span.

This blog enters the fourth year

At first I was puzzled: why would a reader (from Germany, it seems) write “Happy anniversary Kit” in an email addressed to me a few days ago? What was that I celebrate these days? Damn, this is what happens for not marking dates in that calendar application. I was lost. I read it twice, and then some more, unable to see past the point that separated the words, twisting the message: my reader was saying “Happy anniversary Kit.blog!” How could I possibly forgot? Thank you! This blog was about to celebrate its birthday.

It does today.

After three years of blogging I have to confess in front of you all: I'm not an easy writer. I do not write easily, that is. Not in English, anyway. And then I'm chronically dissatisfied with my writing skills.

I tell you, sometimes this blog is like a dog that doesn't want to be walked.

But I am stubborn, too.