Just over three months old the time of review, this running blog for SoHoTampa.com is still in its infancy. The idea of the blog – to keep SoHo Tampa folks informed – is certainly a good and obviously helpful idea. This weblog probably won’t have any impact on anyone not living in the SoHo area of Tampa, FL. It’s a blog directed primarily towards people who live in that area, or who might know of people that do live there.
The very first entry into this weblog states “Our main objective with the ‘blog is to create a clearinghouse of news that affects you and the area you cherish.” This post by Mr. Bill gives the goals he had in mind when creating this weblog. His first goal of wanting to “establish a stronger bond between businesses and residents of SOHO” comes across as a great idea. Posts covering topics like the hurricanes that recently slammed into the Tampa area and expansion of different historic districts in the area, for instance, are excellent attributes in informing the residents of the SoHo area. However, a meme post and a post that states very strong opinions like this one without any information to back them up doesn’t really fit into building that stronger bond. In my opinion, it almost makes the site lose credibility as a serious source for SoHo news and updates.
Two contributors are listed for the site – Rachel and Mr. Bill. Since the site isn’t really about getting to know the authors or anything about their personal lives, readers aren’t really able to find out about the people behind the posts. On one hand, that probably doesn’t matter to some people. On the other, though, it’d be nice for readers to know why they should take the opinions of these two contributors seriously. Are they teenagers just looking for an outlet? Longtime residents of the SoHo area, who do have experiences to back up their facts and opinions? A little more background information would be helpful about these two somewhat mysterious contributors.
The layout just stems from a standard Blogger template, but for a weblog that’s focused mainly on informing readers, rather than entertaining or amusing them, the layout works. The only downfall is the fact that light-colored text on a black background may be hard to read for some people. The banner of the site at the top, a column running alongside the actual blog content is full of links to the archives and other what seem to be Tampa-related sites.
As previously stated, this weblog is more ideal for people living in the SoHo Tampa area. As someone far from that area, this weblog did provide more intimate details of the area that I never would have learned elsewhere. I’m sure there are even posts that may bring unknown information to locals, too. I didn’t feel like this weblog fulfilled its potential or its purpose. There were too many jabs in the community and/or government’s general direction that didn’t have any reasoning to make those comments believable or justified. If a weblog’s going to bring the bond between businesses and residents closer together, this isn’t the way to do
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