Girliegirl1965's Blog

A for Angie and Angola – Response #11 December 4, 2009

I chose Angola as my country.  As I toured Angola’s blogosphere, the first thing that struck me was its home page.  The site appeared to be serious and stoic.    As an American, I’ve gotten used to looking at US blogs, and the ones that I patronize have a sensational, paparazzo feeling, including the White House blog.

As I continued to tour the site, I began to digress a bit.  I was quite taken by the topics of discussion.  There were blogs on everything from cyber activism, to gender, human rights, LBGT, and more.  I had no idea Angola was so liberal.  The links section of the site was also pretty interesting.  The links section was organized in no particular order, but it did seem to breathe a more little life into the country.  It was kind of amusing to see entries about hip-hop and poetry under the arts & culture section, and somewhere stuck in between that section there were entries on business, the Internet and telecom activities, as well as a section entitled ideas.   

As far the layout, a lot of the blogs didn’t have links.  For the most part, the blog entries were short and to the point, some of them had videos, most seem to have pictures that were thumbnail size, and there was RSS feed.  As I kept digging, I discovered the site didn’t takeoff until 2007.  According to the monthly archives, it seems like the first post was made in 2005, and then the next entries occurred in 2006. 

In the end, there  were obvious formatting and stylistic differences between our blogs and theirs, but what unifies us is the fact that everyone is blogging whether in Angola or in the US.  This is perfect example of crowd-sourcing and the Coasean floor at its best— everybody is working together to accomplish a similar mission; and the cost of doing it is low, therefore everyone  can do it!