Boooooiiiiingg

The blog I was tasked to follow is Boing Boing, a multi-award winning publishing entity and one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. Run by up and coming writers and accomplished journalists, Boing Boing deals with technological and cultural curiosities, and exciting or funny stuff from the web.

Boing Boing started off as a small circulation self-published magazine by current co-editor Mark Frauenfelder and his wife in 1988. 15 issues were published with the maximum circulation of 17500. Common topics included sci-fi, technology, futurism and left wing politics. In 1995, Boing Boing was transformed into a web site and was relaunched as a weblog in 2000.

Over the years, the staff has been expanded with the addition of several editors who previously contributed to the likes of The New York Times, Wired magazine, The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and The Guardian. In addition, Boing Boing often features guest bloggers including scientists, journalists and authors. I don’t know 99% of them.

Boing Boing is supported by advertising. In the first business quarter of 2010, they reportedly earned $27000 so it is safe to say that the editors can make a nice living without the worry of going to the poorhouse anytime soon.

I was curious to find out how they can make this money off of this blog, but I haven’t really come up with an answer. Personally, I have never heard of this weblog before and it seems to me that they don’t really care about marketing a lot. Surely, in accordance with the current trends, they are available on Facebook and Twitter, but these options are not exploited enough and the editors don’t really have many followers either. Considering the fact that Boing Boing is one of the most visited blogs, it was quite surprising to realize that there aren’t many user comments. I expected to see hundreds and hundreds of replies, but the post count didn’t even go above 10 sometimes.

The layout is quite simple and esthetic, you are definitely not going to get lost on this site. Most importantly, it is a pleasure to the eye due to its colorful display filled with large images. Also, there are different sections available from the header (?) such as features, books, reviews, science and geek stuff. I especially like the very clever archive. Of course, there is a monthly archive rooting back to 1999 and you can search recent articles listed by days. Moreover, there is a tag cloud which features hundreds of keywords with the most popular ones boldfaced and highlighted in different color.

The blog is updated quite frequently. Up until 4pm ET (Eastern Time Zone), 19 articles were published on April 2. In average, there are at least 30 posts daily. Today’s subjects included Autism Awareness Day, Tibet, Irish Catholic priests sharing gay porn, etc. The posts are usually written in an informal, casual style so visitors can perceive and understand everything easily. Also, the articles contain a lot of references such as links to other sites, quotations, excerpts from books, etc.

In addition, Boing Boing produces two weekly podcasts entitled “Boing Boing Boing” and “Get Illuminated” which are intended to cover actualities, the week’s posts and feature interviews with creative figures such as writers and artists. I don’t know 99% of these people either.

All in all, Boing Boing is quite a decent blog; however, it is not exactly my cup of tea. Surely, I’ve read many exciting stuff over the weeks, but vast majority of the subjects are not really enticing for me. Concerning their success, I’m quite clueless. Maybe I should keep following them and take some notes so one day I could get over 25 grand in a quarter. Git dat dinero, muchachos and chiquitas!