In our ever-so-humble opinion anyway, and here’s why (brace yourself, it’s gonna be a long one):

Newsflash: 2Oceansvibe has pulled out of the SA Blog Awards due to lack of confidence (looks like someone needs to break out his Tony Robbins’ tapes).

Translation: Seth has exercised his right not to vote for anything. However, it was the community that voted for his blog, and as this is a community competition 2Oceansvibe should remain a nominee. Who the fuck does he think he is (actually, we all know the answer to that one)? He didn’t enter, so he can’t pull out… he is however welcome to ignore it all. Here’s hoping, eh?

Anyway, lets look at this guy’s rationale bit by bit, not because we (or anyone else it seems) actually give a shit whether he wants to be involved or not, you know our feelings on that issue, but more because we think he’s a bit of a twat, and it’s fun…

He starts off by saying that the “awards are in tatters” because of the Sunday Times’ article. We should be clear here that said article was buried deep in the paper and is not available on their site (oops: my bad). A front page expose it aint. Here, read it yourself (thanks Vincent):

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Firstly, not particularly accurate Carly, the judges aren’t finalists, the panelists are. The panelist votes only count for 20% collectively, and if you’re nominated for a category, you lose that vote. The biggest vote goes to a totally independent judge, and of course, all the readers. The quotes above are largely taken out of context and some are by people who (granted, not their fault) didn’t have all the facts. It’s understandable though as I believe that the article may have been written by Carly-the-blogger as opposed to by Carly the impartial journo. I do stand under correction here though.

Regardless, there’s some controversy, fine. It’s hardly a shambles though, in fact I believe that the system is far more effective than it has been in the past. Oh, and note well. I say this even though (and to a large part because) for the first time Jo’blog has not received a single finalist spot. I was on the panel btw.

Seth carries on…

They discussed the situation with Jon Cherry, awards coordinator and creator of the ever-exciting and riveting Cherryflava blog site (that’s the first factual thing you’ve said so far mate – Rich…!), who confirmed that he:

“had contacted people who were passionate about
blogging to ask them if they would participate”

Three words: HI LA RIOUS!

Is that what you did? And why would you not contact me, Jon? Isn’t it weird that you didn’t contact 2oceansvibe about this – the most featured South African Blog site in the awards since the beginning? Personally, I would have just been happy to be contacted about COMPETING in the awards in the first place.

Seriously, this guy just doesn’t get it. Hey ego boy, it’s not about you. No one gives a fuck if you want to compete. If they like you, and they do, they’ll nominate you, and they did. It’s that simple. Oh, and no one contacted you because no one contacted anyone. An announcement was made, bloggers blogged about it, and the word got out. It’s a blogging award, blogging was used. What do you want, a gold-leaf invitation? Sheesh bro, welcome to 5-years ago.

Next…

I wrote to Jon Cherry a week ago, noting that although I wasn’t losing sleep over it, and from a purely marketing perspective, I felt that excluding 2oceansvibe from this year’s Best Overall category would look particularly odd and would almost certainly effect the awards’ credibility. The ever confident (smug?) Cherry told me that he did consider it but they went ahead anyway.

I should say here that it wasn’t Cherry’s choice. There were two panelists involved in this category, I was one of them. We created a spreadsheet with criteria we felt would make the best blog. The criterion were as follows:

- Number of nominations

- Writing style

- Average post length

- Incoming technorati links

- Design

- Conversation starting ability

We went through the 260+ nominees in detail. I logged nearly 10-hours on this. When it came down to it, there were better overall blogs than 2Oceansvibe. Overall bro, dig?

No one was guaranteed a place, no, not even the winner from the last two years. Personally, I see no problem with this at all. Tom Hanks won two Oscars in a row, on the third year, he wasn’t nominated. It comes down to what you did that year. Sticking with the film analogy, the best picture award doesn’t go to the highest grossing movie, it goes to the best overall film – that’s what we wanted to get in this category.

In previous years 2Oceansvibe won simply because it was a popularity competition based on reader votes alone, the person with the most readers won. That’s just not good enough, we wanted to open things up a bit to everyone, there are new blogs out there that are better than the oldies, they’re just not always as popular. Yet.

If you’re still not convinced, ask yourself why Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code never won (or was even a finalist for) the Booker Prize.

I like that analogy, to me, 2Oceansvibe is the Da Vinci Code of blogging, extremely popular, a read for the non-readers, but largely ignored by everyone else.

*Yawn…*

Equally bizarre, this year’s nomination process finds the presence of a ‘comments section’ under each post as something very important for blogs to be nominated. It’s a terrible coincidence that 2oceansvibe doesn’t have and never has had comments.

No, it’s not bizarre, and a coincidence it is because despite someone’s obvious delusions of grandeur, the comments bit had nothing at all to do with any particular site, but rather because we wanted to see which blogs got the best conversation going. That’s kinda central to blogging, and to be clear, it was just one of the many factors listed above.

You guys went too far and would always shout “sour grapes” if anything was said. But now look, you’re in the Sunday Times being punished for rigging the judging panel. Very emboerrissing, guys.

By now you would all have read the article and you’ll see that no one has been punished for rigging anything, an observation was made and questions were raised – and answered.

So, yeah man, we’re really mortified. Bloggers around the world have always been swayed by the traditional media (you’re really not getting this blogging thing, are you?). The same traditional media that spent years ignoring us is hardly now the definitive guide to what’s right. In fact I will guarantee you that not a single real blogger could care less what the Sunday Times have to say about it all, other than to be pleased by the fact that they noticed at all.

And please, if 2oceansvibe wins any trophies on the awards night (if you’re HONESTLY gong to go ahead with it), you can keep them – they clearly mean more to you.

Hands up anyone who wants to cancel the awards because of ego-fuck-wit here?

Ooh yeah, a 2Oceansvibe award. I know just where I’ll put it…!

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