Prelude: The New Emerging Influential Blogs of 2008

According to a post made by Janet Toral, the voting for the Ten Emerging Influential Bloggers of 2008 would be started on the 3rd of May. This activity generated a lot of controversy last year. From issues regarding actual influence, alleged intellectual dishonesty, deleting archives and just good-old-fashioned bashing of participating blogs, the event was definitely not short on drama. Though the Philippine Blog Awards had the advantage of having a bombastic off-line awards night, the search for the Ten Emerging Influential Bloggers of 2008 boasted of mobilizing the bloggers who were often ignored by the people at the top of food chain. They were new and they didn’t quite have strong readerships and that made them easy targets for other wannabes who felt that they were much superior.

At the end of the day, it’s about votes - votes from your peers. If your peers think that you’re worthy of a vote, you’ll get it. If you’re not, then you better take it for what it is. It is a popularity contest - and yes, influence over owners of PR1 and PR2 blogs is still influence. It is by no means a bastardization. It’s just the fact that this search puts the words of a blogger with a PR 5 or PR4 soapbox at the same footing with an upstart. There are no king makers nor shady committees who may already have biases. Given the absolute choice between a committee screening and a vote, I’d definitely go for a mass poll.

 

Of the 14 blogs who were feated during last year’s awards dinner, a handful have taken flight to truly become influential sans any disclaimers while most have more or less stayed where they were last year. Sadly, a good number have also dramatically dropped out - with some even totally going inactive for weeks or months at a time.

 

Last year, heavyweights like Aileen Apolo, Dine Racoma, THE Gilbert Cadiz and the Haravatas totally clinched their spot in the top ten early on. Upstarts with strong readership bases like Coy Caballes, Karlo Licudine and Massa P. also had no problem breaking through.

 

For this year though, it seems like no new blogger broke through. No one is exactly taking the scene by storm similar to how these people splashed down when their blogs debuted. The new blogs that made an impression this year were made by bloggers or blogger groups who already have made a name for himself/themselves. That shows the ability of the current crop to evolve and adapt to other niches, but as far as getting more people to break out, 2007-2008 was a big disappointment.

 

The list of ten will be mainly made up of unknowns. And that would make it much easier to pick them apart.

 

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April 21st, 2008 in blogging

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