Web 2.0 Blogging

As we all know, blogging is a huge part of web 2.0, but is blogging really web 2.0 enough? I’m actually not sure, to me, collaboration is the most important keyword in web 2.0. What blogs in general include is information sharing and creativity, but it misses out on the collaboration part. Of course this does not apply for all bloggers out there, but many of us just have our own blog and completely forgets about the collaboration part. A site that hasn’t forgotten about this is dannychoo.com, Danny has made his blog very unique by integrating a lot of cool features and easy ways for users to collaborate. But what does make dannychoo.com web 2.0? Well, let’s begin with the advertising. DC (short for Danny Choo) has a lot of ads, but we’re not just talking about ads like Ads by Google which tends to be somewhat irrelevant to the content. First off DC has a network called the DC Network which basically is a small network of related websites (including blogs).

Before I go any further, take a look at this picture so you know what I’m talking about:

What you see here is the front page of DC. As you can see, the DC Network is located in the top right where you’ll always see it, that way users will always know what it is, and if they don’t, they’ll check it out. This drives a lot of traffic to the other websites in the network since they’re relevant to the user’s interests.

Next off we have the Japan News section, this actually gave me goosebumps when I first encountered it. This is featured feeds for you who didn’t know, it shows the latest posts from other related websites, this is something ALL websites should have.

Let’s continue to the lower right just under Your Menu. Now what’s this? It’s Twitter! (give me a minute, I need to cry a little cause I’m so happy). DC has actually included Twitter as a plugin, or well, it’s actually called Puchi Blurbs and doesn’t have Twitter integration yet. But the Twitter integration will soon be done, in the meantime it works just like Twitter but it’s limited to the registered users on DC, good thing however is that DC is usually pretty fast to finish stuff like this. Now why doesn’t everyone have this? Of course it requires a bit of work but I mean, Twitter is all about what you’re doing at the moment and sharing that to the rest of the world. Let’s say you’re reading an article and find it really interesting, then of course what you do next is tweet it to let your friends know about it. And I mean, it’s right there! You don’t have to go anywhere else, just tweet it right away. This is definitely a feature I’d like to see more of in the future.

Now, my browser height is limited to 800 pixels so let’s scroll down a bit.

Now what you see on the left and in the middle column in both images is articles and news items, but what’s interesting is the right column. Just under the Twitter (or Puchi Blurbs) box , is a list of partners with images rotating randomly on each page refresh. A full list in text is also available just below the pictures. Further down in the second image, featured feeds again! This is where YOU can put your blog’s or website’s feed, as long as it in some way relates to the content on DC.

I could go on and on about this, but I think you’ve understood my point now. Collaboration is web 2.0, just blogging isn’t, at least in my humble opinion. I love web 2.0 and that’s why I want to continue working with this on my blog, cause at the moment it’s definitely not web 2.0 enough.

So here’s a list of what I’m going to focus on apart from the usual posting.

• Partnership
• More featured feeds
  Related feeds is just so much better than irrelevant ads. Less monetization and focus on providing good information instead, it’s not like I earn a fortune on Google ads anyway, haha.
• Guest blogging
  I want guest bloggers on my blog as well as me guest blogging on other’s blogs. If I want to write about something that is totally irrelevant to what I usually write about, why post it on my blog when I can reach a larger audience by posting on a partner’s blog?
• Integration
  We’re all on some sort of social-networking site, so why not try and integrate some of the bigger sites in some way, for example like DC is doing with Twitter? I already have some integration on my blog, you can digg my posts, add stuff to StumbleUpon or Technorati, and you can add my posts to your social bookmarking site. But more integration is always good.

I’m very much interested in what you think of web 2.0 and blogging, so leave a comment before you go. Do you want your blog feed here or do you want to be my partner? Just leave a comment or contact me in some other way.

E you later!

Related posts:

1. How Can we Bring the J-blogging Community Together?
2. Increasing your Blog’s Traffic with Social Networks
3. New Web Host
4. IDOL WANTED
5. Feed aggregators

Tagged as: blogging, danny choo, internet, networking, Social Web & Blogging, web 2.0