...absolutely nothing of course...
I'm not a great fan of awards ceremonies. In fact, I've only nominated any of our sites twice, once for the Yell national web awards (where Modculture was picked as the second-best arts and music site in the UK) and recently, when, against my better judgement, I nominated ALL the Modculture-related sites for the Manchester Blog Awards. Of course, we got shortlisted for nothing. Which pretty much sums up awards.
Yes, it's all down to a judge's personal taste. Was Modculture (pictured above) a better arts and music site than the NME or the BBC a few years back? Of course not. Likewise, does a site like Electric Roulette have some of the best blog writing in Manchester and is Retro To Go (or indeed Cinedelica) one of the best arts and culture blogs? I'd probably say yes on the evidence presented (and on numbers who read everyday).
But I'm not a judge, it's not my personal taste creating this particular hierarchy. Because in a way, you can't really judge one website or blog against another, many have their merits in wildly differing ways. I like to read Selectism and Gizmodo, but I also like to look at sites full of awkward family photos or clips of bad b-movies. What's the best of the bunch? None of them of course, they all serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things - they entertain or inform, which is pretty much all you can hope for with a website or blog.
So no Manchester Blog awards accolade for us this year (or any other year, as it's unlikely that we'll put in any nominations in future), but we wish all who did get shortlisted the best of luck on the big night, which you can find out about here. We'll be down the pub.




It might not sound a great deal, but Retro To Go has just entered the Technorati Top 10,000 blogs.





