As I was writing my last post, I was thinking if there were a way we could figure out what the important, meaningful, and wonderful blogs in this city were. Maybe a tournament. You know, like March Madness. Only with blogs.
Sadly, the best I could do for a name was Blorch Badness. Or Super Fantastic Mega Blogger Ultimate Supremacy Championship. I need to work on names.
But a tournament! And it will be just like March Madness, with regionals. You will get to vote on matchups between the 32 highest rated, most popular, possibly best blogs the Seattle metro area has to offer. Even the Slog (if they behave themselves). And there might even be a prize at the end. (Hey! Anyone out there want to donate a prize?)
I started making a list, and the rest of the Metblogs hivemind has chimed in a bunch of suggestions. Now, it’s your turn. Is there a lesser known Puget Sound-based blog out there that you love? Or maybe a little more known but you think we’re too society matronly or clueless to read it? Tell me about it.
Just to be clear, figure that if they’re ginormous bloggers and not named Robert “I live in San Jose now” Scoble, I already have them on the list. And figure if they’re groupblogs for local alternative papers or blogging for one of the last two papers in town, they’re under consideration too. But there are hundreds of thousands of Blogspot and LJ and Typepad accounts and WordPress and MovableType installations in this area. We’re definitely missing a few.
And here are the rules:
Yes, we’re left out. Just to be fair. And unbiased.
Oh, and the rest of the rules:
1. Must reside in the Seattle metro area. That means King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap Counties. Thurston and Skagit county bloggers will be considered if their Technorati rank is really high.
2. Must still be regularly updating their blog. A post in the last 30 days at the bare minimum. Preferably, a number of posts this month (and a track record of posting semi-consistently).
3. A single media source (e.g. P-I, Stranger) cannot have more than TWO in-house blogs. So, the P-I can only have, say, their Microsoft blog and Buzzworthy, but not the M’s blog as well. However, they can have as many reader blogs as we want. (Basically, I’m trying to keep certain media sources from jamming the brackets, a la the Gawker
family all over the Bloggies.)
4. Groupblogs by our definition should have a stable set of primary bloggers operating from a single standalone site. In other works, seattle.lj does not qualify.
5. Individual LiveJournal accounts are eligible, though. Ditto Vox, Blogspot, and others.
6. Metblogs — and its authors’ blogs — will not be competing. We could, but we don’t want to be humiliated.
7. Seeding will rely primarily on Technorati rank, though like RPI, it’s not the be-all end-all with seeding.
This is either going to be the most fun ever, or Kate Winslett and Leo DiCaprio will be running Seattle Metblogs come March.
OK, there you go. Have at it. Make your list. Check it twice. Post it in the comments by the end of the weekend. We’ll then make the final cutdowns, seed them, and announce the tournament next week.