One of the important things about having blog is, I suppose, about readership. I write my blog primarily for myself. There is almost six years of history in here charting my relationships, by job, my family and friends. There is a hell of a lot of stuff written, and committed to these pages that could not be committed to memory. Reading back over entries from the past is sometimes pretty cool, other times gut-wrenchingly embarrassing, and often insightful. But, back to readership. I like to read (say it; reed), and I would like to be read (say it; red). Other than the few people I know who blog, which isn’t very many, my chances of finding good reads is dependent upon the Gods of Google, or the ‘new posts’ section in my WordPress dashboard. I would like to find a place to find other bloggers who have interesting blogs that I might be interested in reading, and I’d like to find a place to find other bloggers who might be interested in reading mine.
To this end I started up Google and started looking for blogger forums. Somewhere people can go to talk to other bloggers and to start cross-blog relationships. Link exchanges, subscriber exchanges, tips and ideas exchanges. I found one forum that was being plagued by spam, and I found another forum which was dead in the water. I found many domains parked, for sale, empty, blank. What I did not find was a dedicated forum for bloggers which was active, well managed and current. I admit I didn’t look far, and I admit there are a multitude of webmaster forums which will cover this angle in some shape or form, but all-in-all the market stands open for a forum dedicated to blogs.
I thought that maybe I can fill that gap.
A further cruise through the Godaddy domain search tool landed me a cheap domain which would work as a forum for bloggers. blogboards.net was born in a moment of madness and the throwing down of a few pennies this evening.
If you can’t find what you are looking for; build what you are looking for. Over the next few weeks or months, as well as doing my 30 Day Letter Challenge, I’ll make an effort to launch a new forum dedicated to blogging and bloggers.
If this sounds something you might be interested in, drop a comment on this post.
