Introducing two new projects: Blogente.com and ’100gente’

I would like to announce the launch of two new projects I have set free onto the web.

First, after many namings and renamings, we have launched Blogente.com. Blogente is a niche directory of Hispanic-Lation bloggers and is meant to be a useful tool for both Hispanic-Latino bloggers and those interested in them and the subjects they cover.

• Bloggers can add their blog, edit their blog’s information and add subjects.
• Readers can use this directory to find blogs based on subject. Other information provided include description, author, feed, links to add to popular blog services and of course a link to the blog itself.

Second is a project between HispanicTips and Blogente that I am really excited about called ‘100gente‘

Summary

‘100gente‘ is a project by Blogente and HispanicTips to create a network of Hispanic-Latino bloggers. We are looking for 100 voices to forge the way: professionals, activists, artists, journalists, business people, politicians, doctors, educators, academics or anyone could help lead the way. Hispanics-Latinos need a strong voice on the internet and blogs are the perfect platform to carry our voice into the future. Would you like help or do you know someone who would? We offer free professional blog hosting and services with a personal touch for 100 people who would like to blog about Hispanic-Latino issues.

Action

Interested or Know Someone Who Might Be? Send an e-mail to Tomás

Why

We created Blogente to be a niche directory of Hispanic-Latino bloggers but it turned out there aren’t that many out there (at least not in proportion to the population). This was very troubling for us. We couldn’t figure out where the blogs were although we searched very hard and we have talked with others who have done the same. Why weren’t Hispanics-Latinos blogging more, given the blogging craze and the growing influence that bloggers have exhibited in so many spheres of our country?

Traditionally blogs are personal web logs containing anything and everything that a person may want to include in a chronological format. Blogs have taken on a growing role influencing journalism, politics and marketers. Today, CEOs, politicians even the New York Times all have blogs.

Faced with the dearth of good, useful and active blogs covering Hispanic-Latino issues, Halut conceived the ’100gente’ initiative. We consider this campaign the perfect extension of our mission and important to the future of Hispanics-Latinos in the US.

Who we are looking for

As we stated before, we are looking for 100 voices to forge the way: professionals, activists, artists, journalists, business people, politicians, doctors, educators, academics or anyone who has a voice and could help lead the way. We would prefer they be Hispanic-Latino or have a strong relationship to the community. We would prefer people who could blog primarily in English about Hispanic-Latino issues and subjects. Also we would ideally like to find people who could post (i.e. write) to their blog at least once a week. Afterall, a non-active blog isn’t nearly as useful as an active one.

We don’t have any preferences about the potential blogger’s political or religous leanings or their heritage as we understand that the Hispanic-Latino community is a diverse, multi-colored tapestry and believe that all points of view should be represented. We are, however, looking for diversity in terms of location, heritage and political/religious leanings. This will be a ‘highly selective’ group. We are not looking for people to blog about their personal lifes unless something in their personal life is intertwined with Hispanic-Latino issues and this may be the case at times. There are many other blog forums out there purely personal blogs. The ’100gente’ initiative is different because we are offering free professional and personal service in order to jump start Hispanic-Latino bloggers.

Why primarily in English? Don’t get us wrong, we love Spanish, but if we are to be a voice of Hispanic-Latinos on the web then those of us who are bi-lingual or only speak English are the perfect ambassadors for the many who don’t have a strong command of English. We are the translators. In other words, we are the first voices that can be understood by those that don’t speak Spanish. We aren’t at all opposed to posting in Spanish but we would prefer English and if you want to post in Spanish then providing an English translation would be most helpful.

The Details

We offer free blog hosting and service to the ’100gente.’ What this means is:

• You get a blog powered by the awesome WordPress blogging system that we setup and technically maintain.
• All you have to do is post (write) to your blog at least once a week and respond to comments where appropriate. Posting to your blog is as easy as using e-mail so don’t worry if technology stumps you because we are always here to help you.
• You get to choose from hundreds designs for your blog although we have a few standard favorites.
  Take a look at some of the design available.
  • WordPress Theme Viewer
  • Weblog Tools Collection
• You get a subdomain of your choice at blogente.com. For example, if your name is Armando you can have armando.blogente.com
• If you want to purchase a domain name (about $10 per year) we will tell you how and host it for you for free and set the blog up just as if it were a sub-domain or for a $10 fee we will order and setup the domain name of your choice. (Please note we make less than a dollar doing this.)
• All we ask is that you shoulder the role of a leader for our online community. This simply entails you posting your thoughts primarily in English at least once a week on Hispanic-Latino Issues. Don’t get us wrong this can be difficult especially for extremely busy people. However, the rewards for our community will far outweigh the costs.
• If you already have a blog we can import all of posts to your new 100gente blog from most other blog services.
• If you would like we can even put GoogleAds on your site. We only ask that any income derived be split with us to mitigate our expenses. Ads are entirely optional.
• Starting out we expect to setup blogs for people using the basic WordPress template. We hope to begin to launch at 1 to 3 blogs a week beginning in May 2006 depending on the response to this project.
• Please remember that we are doing this for free and taking our time and expertise to help the community. We are mindful that this project may take up a lot of time. For that reason we may at some point have to limit the amount of time we spend per week on this project.

We are very open to comments and suggestions

Interested or Know Someone Who Might Be? Send an e-mail to Tomás

Comments are closed.