Won’t you be my neighbor?
Courtesy of Westwood Neighborhood News site
* White Center now has two neighborhood blogs, an embarrassment of riches. White Center Now is affiliated with West Seattle Blog; White Center Blog is affiliated with The B-Town (Burien) Blog. Amusingly, the blogs’ affiliations (and respective food drives) reflect the ongoing debate about incorporating White Center—Seattle or Burien? City mouse or country mouse? How about any mouse that will provide adequate streetlights, crosswalks, and sidewalks?
Courtesy of KCHA
* Less pedestrian, but still foot-related, Dancing for Joy continues every Tuesday at Westlake Park (downtown Seattle), until August 28th. Tonight is Triple-time Swing! Lessons are available from 6:00 – 7:00 PM; the dancing is in full, er, swing from 7:00 – 9:00 PM.
Just to clarify, whitecenterblog.com was registered to LOL Dudez, LLC (Publishers of B-TownBlog.com) on Jan. 9, 2008, then publicly launched Mon. Aug. 12, 2008.
whitecenternow.com was registered on June 25, 2008, and publicly launched AFTER whitecenterblog.com was.
It was always the intention of LOL Dudez to create, launch and publish whitecenterblog.com, but it took months of work to finally do it, as we’re juggling not only Burien, but Normandy Park, Tukwila, SeaTac and other local blogs!
thanks,
scott schaefer
publisher/editor
http://www.whitecenterblog.com
http://www.b-townblog.com
Thanks for clarifying. Good luck with your new endeavor.
And to further clarify — not that it matters much but because after 30 years in journalism, accuracy is one of my passions — the site with which we are affiliated went live four days before Mr. Schaefer’s site.
Registration timelines are immaterial - anyone can register a site and hold onto it, and that’s no proof of anything other than the fact you bought the domain; you might never do anything with it (I own about 100). His domain, as cached by Google, held the content-free baseline WordPress "just another WordPress weblog" page for seven months, till the first post appeared on Monday 8/11. (I know this only because I looked at that URL over the preceding weekend, days after WCN had launched, wondering if WCN was indeed going to remain the only WC blog. Obviously not.)
We registered WCN (and a couple other options) in June, sketched out some plans, then took the plan in a different direction when we found collaborators a few weeks ago — after some WSB readers initiated a forum thread about the need for a WC blog. Teaming with collaborators enabled us to finish the final push to launch on 8/7. Not all websites launch with fanfare and press releases; it’s more SOP to work in open beta while you fine-tune. However, when Mr. Schaefer announced his site on its first "live" day - including a post in that very WSB forum thread I mentioned - we felt we needed to go ahead and let people know we had already launched a site.
But who was where first, when and why, doesn’t matter anywhere nearly as much as how well this type of site continuously and consistently serves its community with original, relevant content. It may be that both sites, and any that follow, will be found of lasting, growing value.
All I know for sure right now is that after eight days, WCN is off to a smashing start, in the quality of coverage, the reader participation, and in readership (which has already hit an average level that WSB didn’t achieve for its first eight MONTHS).
Thanks for commenting & good luck!