EU Media  

As I reffered in my first post, Blogactiv will be today's subject. For any EU media / EU blog, I will follow the same methodological approach in three points.

1. Description
2. Evaluation of positive / negative aspects
3. Popularity

I will try to be fair and honest but  if you think I've forgotten an important aspect, just drop a comment.

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• Description
• If we reffer to the About Page, Blogactiv is blog platform dedicated to European affairs launched by EurActiv.com. Launched in 2007, it  has been growing very fast and reached an important and tailored readership thanks to its integration with EurActiv.com Network.

Looking at the Bloggers Page, it has about 30 worth "really active" bloggers (I mean bloggers having post more than 10 times) in its community.

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• Evaluation of positive / negative aspects

Launched in 2007 in alpha version, then in bêta in early 2008 and finally relaunched ("reloaded") with a new design and additional feature in June 2008, Blogactiv is clearly a dynamic and innovative platform. Moreover, it offers a wide range of services thanks to its powerful open-source infrastructre (Wordpress MU) and the dedicated technical team behind. Just take a lot at the Support Blog.

But why blogging on Blogactiv?

Well, if you want to open a blog on European affairs, Blogactiv seems to be the best platform to do it. You can reach quickly and easily a wide and tailored readership. Indeed, if you open a blog on another blog platform like Blogger, who will care about your blog? It should take some times before you got any visits / comments even if your articles are excellent.
The problem might be that the community hasn't reach a critical number of bloggers.   Another problem is that Blogactiv is still 90% english-speaking. It's just a pity that French or German is not better represented! Multilinguism is to be a challenge to achieve!

• Popularity

Some blogger - like Stanley Crossick - who's been only blogging for 9 months - has already a PageRank of 6/10. I know PageRank is not everything but it remains an interesting and reliable indicator of the popularity of a website. 

But what does the EU media / EU blogs think about it?

Even europtismists have been defiant against Blogactiv like Jon Worth who thaught  in February 2008 that there is "little incentive for someone like me to join Blogactiv." . However, recent moves show that Blogactiv try to be more inclusive and progressively reachs out the EU blogosphere.