This Place Is…

Portraits of Places via Placeblogs

January 18th, 2007

Like Turn Here (amateur videos documenting places), Placeblogger is about celebrating the unique experiences that characterize places. By juxtaposing all of the blogs about a particular place, a real-time, real-life, word-of-mouth portrait of that place is created that could potentially capture a place in a way that major newspapers or travel guides can’t.

“Placeblogs are about something broader than news alone. They’re about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn’t news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people.”

Naturally, my first impulse was to look up cities in which I’ve lived. Although right now most of the places are major metro areas, I was surprised to see at least one entry for a town near my hometown, Kittanning, PA. I don’t know how many blogs would actually be devoted to writing about a small town like Kittanning, however.

But another way to explore places via blogs, perhaps, would be to look up shared locations on Social Networking sites like Xanga. Although Xanga recommends that you only identify yourself with the larger Metro area, Seth managed to get a pretty decent metro going for Fredericktown, Ohio, the 2300-person town where he grew up… http://metros.xanga.com/metros/metro.aspx?id=7551

LINK: http://www.placeblogger.com/faq

Entry Filed under: Place Sites