Friday, February 10, 2012

The Korean Blog List is Dead. Long Live All The Korea Blogs

After leaving Korea, it's no surprise the guy who ran the Korea Blog List is no longer interested in maintaining it.

It's no surprise, either, because the list has gotten so long and unwieldy, and the choice is either to let it balloon with defunct blogs, or spend ever-increasing time curating something that's no longer an legitimate part of his life.

Now, Blogger Noe has kindly saved all the links originally listed on the Korean Blog List (here) and has updates (here). (The "Foreigners living in Korea" list is here)

Korean News Feeds, which used to clearly be the best spot, also now carries a lot of links to defunct blogs, and has simply started including so many, that I'm no longer sure that they've chosen only the best ones -- its once awesome status as a great curator of blogs has been diluted by volume.

Alphabetical lists (as at Noe's blog) and time lists (in order of when their names were added to the list, which Korean Blog List used to do) are both also subject to the problem of defunct blogs (a constant problem) getting equal space with the active ones.

So I've built a very simple blogspot page, named: All The Korea Blogs, which uses the same "Most recent update goes first" system as the links on the sidebar of my blog -- which I really like, because you can tell which blogs are more active by moving to the top of the list, or spotting which ones linger up there.

If you want to account for quality, look at the sidebar on Roboseyo, where I've put my favorites, instead of "All The..." which looks to be more completist... or check the sidebars of your other favorite blogs.

So add "All The Korea Blogs" to your links, and if you have a blog, ask me to add it.

And everybody: don't forget to check the links on the side of your blog from time to time, to see if they're still updating.

11 comments:

JIW said...

Would it kill you to mention my blog list-blog:
http://expatabundance.blogspot.com/

???
considering you are on it and things are organized categorically as best I thought....
huh Rob...huh?!!?

Roboseyo said...

You'll notice, Joy, that I recommended people check the links on their other favorite blogs; I thought you'd pick up that direct reference to Expat Abundance, which is the favorite blog of every person I've met, thanks to your cheerful, friendly, and never hostile or passive-aggressive tone.

Seriously, though, I only mentioned my own, an aggregator, and one other person's: the person who exported the entire Korean blog list to his own blog, which is about quadruple the number of links at Expat abundance. If I listed every blog that included lists of links to other blogs, I'd pretty much be duplicating the Korea blog list over on Noe's page.

Katherine said...

I am mysteriously absent from this list! Somehow! Though to be fair most of the time I guess I just bitch about K-pop and shitty foreigners, hahaha.

English Speaking Course said...

Every important post, blog & link must be shared with everyone. It will be nice for all that we must be aware of the facts which are of utmost importance. Thanks for this sharing.

JIW said...

>< sorry ...brain fried from stress lately.

Thanks Rob..I had no clue it was actually popular. ANyways thanks for putting your list together. :)

Roboseyo said...

Katherine: omissions can easily be corrected. Just email me a friendly note with the link, or enter it in the formspring box on the site. :)

noe said...

Hehe, you know what makes this the most difficult is that with the addition of Tumblr, there are so many new Korea blogs...or not exactly. I notice that most Tumblrs tend to post picture here or there, but pre-Tumblr blogs tend to have writing longer than one paragraph. It is...difficult to determine if some would even pass as "Korea blogs"

Ps! Hope you don't mind I take the links that get added onto your blogroll Rob : ) Trying to find them all is daunting. The list must live on!

-n

thelostseoul said...

Shows you how much I follow the K-blogosphere. Didn't realize that the TKBL was dead. lol. Anyways, add me if you would like.

Although, I am definitely not in the always-cheerful camp that most k-blog fans seem to favor.

#Koreavalentine cmon already you punsters.....

Roboseyo said...

Hi Rob! Could you add my blog? http://smashkorea.blogspot.com/ Called Life in Daegu.  I found the Korean blog list invaluable in preparing for my move and still read some of the blogs from there today.  I hope my own blog could be useful to fellow expats.

Roboseyo said...

web design   i like korea

Roboseyo said...

Hi Rob, could you add two of mine to your list:
www.yatapphotography.com
www.evanbleker.com


Thanks a lot!