Today’s focus: sustainability.
The best: Cognitive Daily, a blog about cognitive psychology from a couple in Davidson. The academic focus is refreshing. The blog has a high-quality institutional ad from Dow Chemical, plus contribution boxes and links to a network of science blogs that support each other. You could question the ethics of taking money from Dow, but this blog’s ability to sustain itself with quality information over time is amazing. It has two authors, which helps, plus a network of other blogs to increase traffic and provide further content and support. Great site, great network.
The worst: Don’t back down. This Charlotte area blog seems to be an exercise in seeing how many Google line ads can be squeezed into a small basic Blogger template. Design is sad. Lots of wasted space on either side of the template, and then the Google ads dominate the top of the blog, providing readers with a shopper-type atmosphere from which they’ll likely click quickly away. The post is a history lesson on Columbus Day — not unique information, but merely a vehicle, it appears, for the ads. Sustainability relies on quality, unique content, with a sponsor that provides more than the pennies that liner Google ads provide.
7 responses so far ↓
links for 2007-10-09 [Cognitive Daily] · New York Articles // October 9, 2007 at 4:27 pm |
[...] The five best and worst sites, Part IV I was relieved to see we weren’t one of the “worst” sites… [...]
toni // October 9, 2007 at 9:26 pm |
Thank you, what a great idea..and i would never have found the cognitive blog and i oh so agree with the dow ad….i will put a sticky over it…..will keep checking back….t
MySpace Addons // October 10, 2007 at 11:09 am |
How do you suggest monetization of blogs? Less obtrusive, obviously. But any suggestions?
Andria // October 10, 2007 at 10:00 pm |
Some people are hoping a public-radio or public-TV model will work.
Check out the link in the blogroll to the Knight News Challenge proposals for more ideas.
Chad Everett // October 18, 2007 at 9:21 am |
Interesting write-up, though I don’t necessarily agree with your points. Your conclusions may or may not be valid.
See here for why, if you’re curious:
http://jayseae.cxliv.org/2007/10/18/is_this_the_least_sustainable_site_on_the_internet.php
Andria // October 19, 2007 at 9:10 am |
Hi Chad,
Responded at your post. My biggest regret: using superlatives like “best” and “worst.” Hope we talk more in the future…
Filtering, networking and reverse publishing — in science « Global Vue // January 22, 2008 at 9:46 pm |
[...] More interesting links from the conference here. A quick look at one of the science blogs for an earlier class assignment here. [...]