The Weblog Awards, Part Five

Read all our endorsements here:

We now move into the top Echelon of the TTLB ecosystem in the top two tiers:

The best of 251-500:

Nickie Goomba is the first blogger I’ve seen to feature a comic to celebrate being a Weblog Finalist.

Betsy’s Page is the reigning champ in this category and no wonder. Design is simple, commentary is insightful. It was a winning formula last year and comes close this year.

Sister Toldjah is a well-designed blog focusing on the war on terror with some excellent stories and great research.

The Winner:

Confederate Yankee: As they said in a corny love movie a few years back, “You had me hello.” As soon as I saw the top page, I knew it. Just like in Lord of the Rings. This was the One Blog TO RULE THEM ALL (Who are ranked 251-500)! The guy’s content was awesome, use of pictures, blog design. He has it all going on. Great humor, great insight. Wow!

Best of the Top 250 Blogs:

Honorable Mention:

Vodka Pundit is a lot like Instapundit, except he allows comments and trackbacks. His design is more sleak than most blogs. He says his is the blog of future. He may be right.

The Winner:

Outside the Beltway is a great blog, with a lot of great information. As I go through its pages, I feel like I’m reading a newspaper. No wonder he’s gotten 5 and a half million visits in the past three years.

Best Business Blogs

Econbrowser: This is your father or your uncle’s business blog, filled with vital stuff on GDP to make the Economics major smile.

Bizzy Blog was the first blog I found (out of the first ten on the list) that seemed to care about the Weblog Award. He’s got a lot of passion (which is rare in a business blo) blog) but he’s not “all business” with a lot of positive news and political views, he brings a lot of passion to the blog and it shows.

Manufacturers Blog: This is actually a pretty cool, well-designed blog with some very interesting content. You wouldn’t expect this from an industry site, but its really quite good.

Winner:

Blogs for Books:

If you want a great business blog, the first you need is a great blogger (like Stacy Harp). The site is in fact a business and a very successful one at that, connecting opionated people (bloggers) with people who need opinions on books. Its a great business model, a great idea, and a great service to the blogging community. So my vote goes to Blogs for Books.

I’ve got to tell you that this is the one category I’ve gone through that may be axed. The Business blogs seemed incredibly bored in general. There was a lack of passion in a lot of the entries. Most blogs in other categories have been hyper-honored to be nominated, most Business blogs are too “grown up to care” (only 3 of the 15 blogs had links to the Weblog Awards.) They may want to refine this as “Financial Blogs” and they may get people whose blogs focus on less intellectual topics like debt reduction or saving money. The point of these awards is that people care and are excited. If they don’t, it really puts a damper on everything.

Beltway Traffic Jam

Weblog Awards

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