Splash pages. I said it before, and I will say it again. I hate them. They serve no purpose with weblogs other than to have me click another page. I did think this one was much better than the others I had seen, because at least this one let me know it was going to be a group weblog.
So now I am reading the weblog, and I noticed something. The posts are typically meant for someone in the group. From what I could tell, about 90% of them were. But even though the majority was intended for the group, I could tell some of them were for everyone.
This site seemed like it was just one big conversation that was on going between group members. And they seem to know each other out side of the weblog as I found many reference to seeing each other and calling each other in the posts. Interesting idea: instead of emailing someone to call you, post it for the world to see. Maybe it makes it seem that much more important? I don’t know.
The design of this site is slick. Very well done, and the owner really knows his way around designing a website. He also creates pixel people for each of the posters so you can tell who posted what. That was way cool, and I really liked this idea.
This site is just average, but I had to give it a below average score because it didn’t seem like the outside world should know about it. As I stated most of the posts seemed geared towards someone in the group of participants, and not the general reader. There are some good posts, and some bad, just like a normal weblog, and the design is really good, but it comes back to who the target audience is. Maybe if the group as a whole decided to post both “internal” and “external” type posts, I would have enjoyed it better. But as the saying goes, “This is an AB conversation, so C your way out of it.”
sciongate