CBA Logo: China Blog Awards Logo.The idea of a China Blog Awards has arisen and I'm pleased. I have no chance of winning, but that's cool because even in IT I'm focussed only on a small niche - running China-related websites (and apologies, my business with actually doing so has resulted in the neglection of this site).

What is a Blog?

I have discussed this question with Chris and Rick recently: what is a blog? And how do blogs impact those in/interested in China?

OK, the easy answer is that it's a web-log, a web-based journal, a blog. A blog is technically no different from a forum, in that a blog post contains a post and a series of replies. A forum can be assigned a single 'owner' whereby the permissions to post a thread can only belong to the 'owner' and everyone else be relegated to replying; a blog does not have to be the preserve of one person, there are many group blogs across the Internet. There is no technical difference between a blog and a forum - the difference is one of permissions and presentation, which leads to different people having different reactions to each form of Internet discussion.

Outside of blogs and forums there are plenty of corporate websites in China (of which a few run or are promoting blogs - Dezan Shira run a few including 2.6 billion and China Expat).

Are China Blogs a Scene Which Celebrate Themselves?

Having a 'Best China Blog' award ceremony is a fantastic thing, not because it results in someone having a prize, but because it raises awareness of blogs which may be useful and otherwise difficult to find. Administering the award through The Humanaught and Chinalyst raises awareness with other bloggers and some casual bloggers.

But what about the vast amount of China related websites that aren't strictly blogs, or that don't participate in the 'blogosphere' by leaving comments, but are actually quite useful? I'm thinking of community sites, news sites, strictly-business sites. Why is there such a seemingly chasmic divide between blogs, everything else, and everything else. Is blogging all that important, or is providing information important? Blogs may be very interesting, but most are pitifully awful (albeit less so than forums) at providing information more than a few months old.

These blog awards are a great thing, but not let's pat ourselves on the back that something has been achieved - this is just the beginning. There is a large chunk of potential audience not aware, exposed to, or interested in China blogs that happily read and/or comment on other forms of website. Blogs have a wealth of information to offer but miss many.

Why Should the Future Lay With Blogs?

Well, it shouldn't necessarily. I find blogs an excellent, incomparable source of fresh accurate news about many facets of Chinese life and society, from food to Economics to IT, from Xinjiang to Harbin to Hainan again. Blogs have a clear owner, a clear posting structure, a usually clear perspective/objective and once the many that are trash are filtered, the information and opinion conveyed is excellent.

There are eCommerce sites - generic ones focusing on travel or even business lack any kind of local perspective and are somewhat poor at almost anything. A poor joke that people actually use them. But why do people? Is it because they think they can find what they want?

Compare blogs again to the average 'Community Site' - owned by someone who did no more than install forum software on a computer and ask a handful of others to get the ball rolling. Blogs have a personality-heavy perspective but can offer a lot more 'love' than someone making another comment on another forum.

But community sites have an advantage - they have a community - a mass of information and people perhaps inclinded to point your in the correct direction. Chinalyst's new title is 'A Community for English Language Blogs.' The technology and effort is comparable to most 'Community Sites' dotted around different cities in China - a bloke with an aggregator persuaded a few people to get the ball rolling and now it's a community?! Chinalyst's advantage is it's classification structure - lots of information can be aggregated and it could actually be stored/cross-referenced in a useful way. Chinalyst could be the future for English language China blogs. Hardly a community, no more than Google is a community for searching for things, but the potential for blogs overcoming practically everything out there - not community - an awesome cartel of information providers.

[But FiLi - could you attribute a little more than 50% of the revenue to contributors? After all, on the pages that are not specific to a particular blog you get practically everything, which is practically nothing now, but it could be a heck of a lot in the future.]