So this marketing agency I’ve never heard of has released a list of Quebec’s top 30 blogs (PDF).
Banlieusardises comes out on top, followed by our favourite taxi driver at Un Taxi de Nuit, the currently-on-hiatus Mère Indigne, Mitch Joel’s blog at Twist Image (the top anglophone blog) and Anne Archet (the top blog I’d never heard of before).
Other anglophones on the list: Julien Smith’s In Over Your Head Hip-Hop Podcast (6) (his take), StayGoLinks (9), Metroblogging Montreal (11, leaving MtlWebLog and Midnight Poutine off the list entirely), bopuc/weblog (25) and HabsBlog, the only sports blog on the list.
Of course, what’s crazy about this list is that Fagstein is not on it. After setting the blogging agenda around the city for weeks now, to be shunned like this is just insulting.
Seriously though, there are some local blogs that should be on the list:
- Montreal City Weblog, Kate McDonnell’s no-frills daily news blog, which in addition to its age provides interesting links to what other people think of our city.
- Midnight Poutine, the only blog that runs like an original news site, with regular weekly features (like their weekend podcast and metro roulette)
- Chicagoan in Montreal, Frank’s fascinating look at the city from the eyes of an outsider (even if he’s been living here for a while)
- Christelle’s blog (cute puppy! OMG!)
- ChuckerCanuck, for those of you who doubt that crazy right-wingers exist here
- Coolopolis, Kristian Gravenor’s look at Montreal’s unknown history
- Expo Lounge, which was reminiscing about Expo 67 long before it became fashionable this summer
- Montreal Tech Watch, probably the most comprehensive blog for news about the local tech entrepreneur community
- Montreal LiveJournal community, which has become a one-stop advice centre for the city’s clueless Internet-enabled youth
- MTL STREET, the fashion goldminer
- Overheard at McGill, the most frequently updated “overheard” blog
- Pow! Right between the eyes!, Andy Nulman’s blog about marketing through the power of surprise
- Urban Photo, Chris DeWolf’s photographically-enhanced blog
- Walking Turcot Yards, a blog entirely about an undeveloped piece of land and the giant concrete spaghetti mess of a highway intersection that runs next to it
In the Blogosphere: N’ayez pas peur (14), IPUB (27), Michel Leblanc (16), Montreal Tech Watch, Technocité
Ohh my blog too?! :D I feel honoured! ;) :)
It’s a neat list to discover blogs.. A few of them I didn’t know. :)
I’ve never heard of Hue agency either. And I also think their ranking is not very serious.
By the way, I liked your blog list at the end.
Great writing style too.
cheers
Heri
Thank you, Steve. I’m honored that you think I should be on the list. I’m kinda surprised that blork is not on the list, though it is nice that martine made it.
Personnellement, j’aurais mis Christelle en number one du classement. Elle représente une belle synthèse de ce pays : une francophone qui blogue en anglais ;)
merci pour la mention !
Hi Steve
You are right, a lot of anglos blogs are missing. The author apologize in a Michel Leblanc’s comment:
http://www.michelleblanc.com/2007/05/22/influenceurs-bloguosphere-quebecoise/#comments
Pingback: Mario tout de go
Hi Fagstein,
Indeed, we need to improve our crawling for the English blog.
By the way, we didn’t mean to insult anyone, au contraire. But due to the fact it was hard to identify Quebec based “English bloggerâ€, we have limited this part of the crawling and hope to improve it during the next months.
We will post more about our methodology on our blog in the next weeks.
As for “not knowing our agencyâ€, we are a Montréal based interactive agency of 30 employee. I invite you to call me on my cell (514 692 5768) and I will be happy to show you around. I`ll pay the lunch. =)
Thank you for your comments!
Steve–
For Christ’s sake, your list is way more influential anyway. Much happier to be on The Fagstein 14 (well, 15 if you include yourself, andthe alliteration still works) than on the Hue are they anyway’s.
–Andy
There has been many Canadian lists and contests of “top bloggers” that included blogs almost exclusively written in English. I guess it’s always the same story: people don’t seem to believe in any kind of “influence” outside of their regular reading circle.
In an ideal world, a list of “top blogs” based in Canada should be bilingual. But who would believe in the results?
(Or maybe I should say that in an ideal world, nobody would care about a “top blogs” list.)
Dear Steve
There are numerous problems with top bloglists. first of all how do you compare a sex blog, a mom’s blog and a professional blog? All of those blogs attracts quite different readership in various markets. Furthermore, how do we compare French and English blogs? I have a huge readership in France but I am quite unknown in Toronto. I presume that for you it is quite the opposite. So to put all those blogs on the same level and commpare them on a so called “influence scale” it becomes ludicrous. Furthermore, where do the influence opf those bloggers take place? In Quebec, Kuala Lumpur, Switzerland? Where are those Web hyperlinks and blogroll links are coming from? Those are questions that are still in the air…
That being said thanks for the mention and personnaly I prefer the wikio.fr topblog list that puts me the 28th most influencial Francophone blog in the world rather than the InfoPresse that puts me on the 16th most influencial blog in Quebec but that’s just my ego talking….
Howdy!
Yuck. Chopped Liver again.
Sorry. There’s a court order preventing me from praising the blog or anything else relating to Z*ke’s G*llery. I’m not even allowed to utter the name in public.
What a lineup! Really appreciate getting on your list. Everyday I wake up and think, “Don’t put another picture of that ^&**^$^ interchange up today!”(heh) Then somebody says something nice and, what the heck….
While I’m on this InfoPresse list (no clue how, but hey, it’s all love). There are more than a handful of others who should be up there.
– Harry Wakefield – Moco Loco.
– Ben Yoskovitz – Instigator Blog.
– Galacticast – Podcast, but you get what I’m saying.
– Andy Nulman – Pow! Right Between The Eyes (already listed, but I’m a huge fan).
– Jean Julien – iPub.
– Marc Snyder.
– Creative Generalist…
… and yes, there are tons more (in both French and English).
I think Michel Leblanc has hit the nail on the head. We’ll all be visible to different degrees in different places. Lists are just another form of social media. I’m on the list but not for my most Montreal-based blog, The Other Bloke’s Blog. My most visible blog doesn’t get on to any of these lists but appears well in Internet Marketing circles.
Perhaps we should all be going more for tagging and adding a Montreal tag, wherever we can. However I fear that tagging is a here-today/gone-tomorrow phenomenon like Twitter and Digg. After all the other form of tagging in our downtown streets is often viewed as pollution.
Who the hell is the HUE Agency?