A small milestone – 5 years of the Euroblog
5 Years Birthday Cake - CC / Flickr
On 19th July 2005 I wrote a small blog entry about my frustrations with Ryanair, and also explained my blogging debut. “Am I too late jumping on the blogging bandwaggon?” I mused at the time. Looking back it for sure was not too late, and indeed many of the top blogs – especially those on the left in the UK – have ceased. When it comes to blogging about the EU, only Nosemonkey has been at it longer.
It has been an interesting road since then, racking up – at the time of writing – 1208 posts and 7584 comments. Almost every one of the posts has at least one image – rather rare for a political blog.
In 2006 the blog was rated 10th best in UK politics in Iain Dale’s lists (2006 and 2007 scores here) before dropping off the UK blogging radar due to excessive EU geekiness. My 2006 failure at the Commission entrance exams has created one of the most active places to discuss the concours with 3516 comments so far across 2 posts. A post in September 2007 (updated here) led to the creation of Bloggingportal.eu. The biggest thing I’ve ever done – the Atheist Bus Campaign – started from this post in 2008, while 2009 saw the Gender Balanced Commission campaign launched from the blog. In 2010 the blog has been rated 5th most influential about the EU.
My mind works in eccentric ways, and the blog posts reflect that. From my sporting pursuits to Eurostar to the travails of the European left, from the quandaries of food emissions to World Cup footballs to the stupidity of Boris Johnson’s routemaster plans – it’s all been covered.
From a technical point of view the blog started off on pLog and for the last 4 years has been running WordPress. It has been hosted in at least 3 places, currently by the excellent EZPZ Hosting. Over the past 18 months I’ve also become a dedicated Twitter user (@jonworth) to complement the blogging, and surpassed 2000 followers the day before the 5 year anniversary of the blog.
Above all blogging has allowed me to meet excellent people all over the place, to be invited to all kinds of events and to build all sorts of projects with the people I’ve met. It’s been a hard road sometimes, but I’m never short of ideas or thoughts, and the blog has been (and will continue to be) my canvas to express what’s on my mind. Here’s to the next 5 years!
Jon and Nosemonkey, our most beloved seniors. Congrats!
It was Jon who encouraged me to start a blog and gave me loads of useful advice on the techniques and the technologies.
happy blogging birthday!
It’s not just what you write on this blog – fascinating as it is- that is your real blogging achievement.
I wonder how many other bloggers – EU and non-EU you’ve inspired/ convinced/ helped to set up their own blogs? And helped with the technology?
That alone would make you deserve a high ranking in influence in EU blogging (even if it’s not a factor that a lobbying company would ever list!)
Champagne and rollerblading to celebrate?
Also worth noting – the EU is so boring that a week blogging about the thing is like a year blogging about pretty much anything else. So this is actually your 260th blog birthday.
Congratulations – it can’t be easy keeping up such an active blog, but you do it very well
@Nosemonkey – OK, I should have clarified… your blog is a one-man effort, as is mine. AFOE and EU Referendum are multi-author, so they have more capacity to keep it going longer (you would have thought)!
Only five years? I could have sworn you’d been going longer than that… Oh well, congrats, etc.!
One thing, though – although I started my place up in March 2003 (which scarily enough does seem to make mine the longest-running Euroblog – unless you count Cafe Babel), Fistful (Sept 2003) and EU Referendum (Apr 2004) have both been posting *regularly* for longer than I have, as I didn’t really get into (EU) blogging until summer 2004. There are a few other eurosceptic blogs that may also have been going for longer than me – EurSoc springs to mind, though it’s lost its archives, so it’s hard to tell) but not all are entirely EU focused, so not sure if they count.
/potted history of (English-language) EU blogging
Jon,
Your Euroblog has been a trail blazer in the EU social media field, and it remains one of the emblematic members of the Euroblogosphere, hopefully in an active and energetic mode during the years to come.
Congratulations and the best of luck!
Congratulations & good luck with the next 5 years!