@liverpoollogs

About Well this is something I didn't think I'd end up doing again.

Back in 2007, when blogging was still a thing, I decided that if writer Kate Feld was collect Manchester blogs on her blog The Manchizzle, someone in Liverpool should do the same thing and so I began a blog called Liverpool Blogs designed to promote blogs in Liverpool.

It was always a bit of a irony full zone because as a blog it didn't really work because mainly it was about the sidebar being a list of the Liverpool blogs and so eventually I replaced the blog completely and just ran the list of blogs as the main content on the page.

Eventually when Twitter became I think, I loaded up a folder on Google Reader and began autoposting links to the blogs to Twitter which became the main format that people seemed to read it and people seemed to like it. It's the format I eventually copied for the @shakespearelogs Twitter feed which has in and of itself been a great success within its own limits.

In mid June 2012 the main blog list page apparently gave out a virus warning and concerned something horrid may also have migrated to the Twitter feed I put both on hiatus and then realised that the process of finding out exactly which blog was the problem was causing the problem would be such a massive undertaking, the hiatus became permanent.

Which was a relief because the whole thing had become less entertaining than it had initially been due to a series of fundamental and manifold problems.

(1) Maintaining the main list page was a messy, time consuming horror because of dead links, adding new blogs and having to deal with spammers complaining that their blog hadn't been listed because ....

(2) They kept pretending to be in the area because I'd borrowed Kate Feld's rule of only listing blogs in the area and of being comprehensive. Eventually this also led to being harassed a bit via email by people who thought it was their right to be there even though I wasn't sure about the legality of what they were writing. Fun times.

(3) The geography rule also meant that the list and feed became a bit unfocused because it included blogs like mine which cover everything so people would look at a Twitter feed called @liverpoolblogs and find precious little content actually about Liverpool which I didn't ever think wasn't valid.  Plus there were whole questions about whether Tumblrs and the like should be in there of which there were hundreds.

(4) By calling it Liverpool Blogs expectations were created and sometimes it was difficult to tell what actually counted as a blog.

All of which meant that the hiatus was a relief.  But I did miss that stupid feed, it was a pretty handy thing to have and an ace way of keeping up, sometimes, with things which were happening in this stupid city.

Which is why I've decided to have another go.  Sad face.

But there are philosophical changes.  It's different.

For a start, learning a lesson from @shakespearelogs, I'm changing the name of the Twitter feed to @liverpoollogs, that single loss of a letter changing expectations in what it will cover in two ways:

(1)  It won't just be blogs

Basically this will be a news and commentary twitter feed now, but still including personal blogs if they're regularly updated and "loved".

(2)  In general it will only be about Liverpool

Utilising Web 2.0 doodat IFTTT as the new back end, means I can filter each of the feeds on the fly so each one will only ever post a link to the feed if that post is about Liverpool especially if it's a general feed like a newspaper or the BBC.

(3)  No geographical rule.

If it's about Liverpool and the surrounding areas and I think it'll be useful it's in.  I've already added in some Beatles sites for colour.

(4)  No list page.

That's biggest change.  Essentially now, I'll simply create a recipe at IFTTT and add a label to each Tweet listing the source and that's how the reader will know the source.  That means I won't  have to spend half my time pissing about with links and lists and like @shakespearelogs leave IFTTT to get on with things.  Oh and

(5)  It's going to be heavily edited

Or more specifically like my Twitter feed and @shakespearelogs it's going to be mostly things I might like to read, so there still won't be hundred of links to things on Football sites.  It's not going to be comprehensive (which is arguably what killed things last time).  I'm mainly doing this for me to use.  So there's that.

We'll see how this goes.  The feed has about five hundred followers and none of them have commented yet on it suddenly spitting out tweets again so I don't know if anyone's noticed that it's back, assuming anyone noticed it went.  Or cares.

https://twitter.com/liverpoollogs