Thursday, October 25, 2007

Tacoma: 200,000 blogaholics can't be wrong ...

Ok, some of you newbies (or oldies) might not get the reference. Out there somewhere there are T-shirts from Tacoma's grittier days when to be proud of Tacoma was looked at as an over-optimist's ever-quest for the silver lining, there were these T-shirts ... And they read: "Tacoma: 185,000 alcoholics can't be wrong." My husband jokes that it's how he remembers the approximate population of Tacoma. (Though now even the census records put us close to 200,000, and recent numbers say we've at last pushed through that ceiling.)

Anyhow, back to my point ...

There seem to be a lot of bloggers in Tacoma. Especially a lot of Tacoma-centric bloggers, with a lot of them being proud (longtime and newcomer alike) Tacomans.

Some of my regular blog rounds include:

Exit133, FeedTacoma, the News Tribune blogs, the Tacoma Gnome, TacomaMama, Erik Emery, Zesty Enterprise, the list goes on and on ... seriously, on and on and on and on and on and on ... you get the point.

Which got me wondering, are other cities this blog-happy about themselves? Seriously. It seems like a lot.

FeedPortland.com is a religious ministries organization. Exit66.com is some guy's personal website and Exit300.com is some random website service. There is, in fact, a SeattleMama.com. But it's, well, quite different than ours. And PortlandMama.com is definitely more of a business enterprise than our own local version's feet-on-the-street efforts. There is a Gnome.com ... but I didn't detect another city with it's own gnome blogger.

Now, other cities do have blogs. There's OlyBlog, OlyPoster, EugeneBlog, DowntownEugene, the SeattleBlog, MetBloggingSeattle (Which appears to be a chain blog? That's new to me ...), various neighborhood Seattle blogs, of course, Portland Neighborhood's Blog, Boise Blog (run by a real estate broker), MetroBlogging Minneapolis (another one of that chain! hmm ... they haven't hit Tacoma ... yet.) Anyhow, etc. etc.

So, are we just a sign of the times? Or is Tacoma blogger happy ... and are all those alcoholics now blogging? I won't say what I'm drinking while writing this ...

5 comments:

Erik B. said...

I have looked at some other Washington cities and Tacoma seems to be in front of all of them blogwise. Some other cities have a few but many of them are selling something at the same time.

Droid116 said...

According to Scarborough Research, Austin TX, Portland OR., San Francisco and Seattle are the top markets for people who read or contributed to blogs. I heard this on the radio this morning and then looked it up. 15%, 14% and 13% for the final two cities. But what they don't characterize is topic or civic blogging. Though I don't think the blogger concentration in Tacoma is as high as these high tech centers, I do think the focus on the city and community here is notable.

Tacoma Gnome said...

Does this include foreign bloggers blogging about local sites?

I'm just wondering ... a friend of mine wanted me to ask.

Yes. A friend.

Anonymous said...

The hyper-local focus of all our blogs (31 and counting at FeedTacoma with more on the way) has got to be something special. I find there's very few places elsewhere that do it. When a group of 4 of us drove up to that KOMO bloggers meet-up in early August even though there were only Tacoma bloggers there we were certainly the only folks that introduced ourselves first as Tacoma bloggers then second as our own blog. We are a proud bunch, for sure, as we should be.

James Lamb / tvjames said...

Well, just north of you, we have Federal Way Graffiti, Federal Way Blog, Federal Wayan, Federal Way Undressed, not two tangentials... VoteNoAnnexation and HyleBlog.