SA Blog Roundup Part 2

Part 1 of the roundup presented a brief introduction and introduced South African blogs listed at Big Blog Directory. This post will look at the SA blog scene from an outsider's viewpoint.

The South African Blog Scene

When I started BBD in October of last year I knew very little about South African blog resources. When I did search for resources I found very few of them.

The first site I came across was the South African Blog Directory. This was a Blogspot based directory that listed blogs in it's sidebar and occasionally featured some in posts. The blogs were organized into categories but labels were not used. The directory eventually disappeared.

When South Africans began submitting blogs to BBD I saw links to SA Topsites, SA Blog Topsites and Muti. I browsed these sites but they didn't really catch my attention. Muti would get mentioned in blog posts from time to time.

In January things started to happen with the 2007 edition of the SA Blog Awards. I saw a number of posts about the awards. Most of them discussed the nominated blogs while some talked about the controversy surrounding the awards.

In February SA Rocks was launched and began to gather momentum. For many the positive outlook of the site was appealing. They linked to the site and some of them became contributors.

In March and April two Technorati-like sites were launched. Amatomu, which came first, looks at the South African blog scene from different angles and bloggers use it to keep up with other blogs, follow trends, and even as a source of blogging humour.

Afrigator was launched in April and took a broader mandate than Amatomu. It covers all of Africa and includes feeds from news sites as well as blogs.

I haven't discovered any new blog sites lately but more may be coming. The blog scene is quite dynamic and the bloggers are creative. People looked at South Africa and SA blogs and sought ways to make things better. This has had a positive effect on blogging and bloggers have been getting more exposure. The future of blogging in South Africa looks bright indeed.

Blog Search Engines

Gargoyle

Grabble

A Short Reading List

Amatomu - South Africa’s Technorati

Does the SA Blogging “elite” dominate Muti?

Introducing the public Amatomu alpha: notes from the developer

New local blog directories and a new blog service

SA blogging industry growth pains...

sarocks.co.za launches today

State of the Nation - 2007 trends for SA blogging

The controversial 2007 SA Blog Awards

What’s With Afrigator?

Part 3 will list the participating blogs and wrap up the roundup.