But who are the winners of the 2005 Business Blogging Awards?
I recently wrote here about the 2005 Business Blogging Awards. Here is the list of the winners, announced on February 23. If I except Chris Pirillo, known for Lockergnome, none other name seems familiar to me.
And I’m not alone. Frank Barnako, from MarketWatch, and who knows this world far better than I do, wrote an article on this subject, “And the winners are … who? ”
Incidentally, do you know that MarketWatch, which edits two online news sites, has been bought in November 2004 for more than $500 million by Dow Jones & Co., the owner of newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal? This gives some credibility to MarketWatch, which receives more than 8 millions of unique visitors each month.
So, Barnako considers that this contest was only a self-promotion exercise for the two bloggers behind the initiative. Here is a short excerpt.
Unfortunately, these awards mean nothing. There were no qualifications for nomination and no judgment from voters who are peers. It was a popularity contest. To suggest the competition’s purpose was more business development than professional development, consider that one of Wright and Barefoot’s consulting clients, eBizBlog.ca, won an award. You have to wonder: why didn’t all of them?
If we decide one day to organize such a contest in Europe, we’ll need to find more credible candidates. But we are not there yet.
