As I stated on my 1,200th post, I’m starting a new weekly series that I hope I can and will continue through the end of 2012. I decided to call them all Black Web Friday and have them separated by the date so they’re easy to find. I’m also creating a new category of the same name like I did when I was doing my Sunday Question series; if you missed those you should check some of them out, as I thought they were generally entertaining.

Today is the first day, and I don’t have any real rules for what I say about these sites except to say that I plan on introducing at least one blog each week, whether I go with multiple sites or not. Bloggers are who I really want to highlight to begin with, but I just feel there’s so much more that folks don’t know about that I’m going to help highlight. Also, if I mention a blog, I’ll tell you what the commenting system is, since many of you know I’m particular about the types of blogs I’ll comment on, in case you go visit a site and wonder why you don’t see a comment from me somewhere there. Of course, some blogs I probably won’t comment on anyway for certain reasons, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthy of being visited.

These could end up being relatively short posts compared to my normal missives; I’m sure some of you will be thrilled by that prospect. 🙂 So, here we go.

The first site I want to highlight is called The Grio. It’s basically a news site that’s geared towards black people from a black perspective. It offers both news and commentary, and you’ll see many of its articles quoted or linked to from CNN quite often, which is how I discovered it. It also has a great entertainment section and offers many other features that you’d see on more traditional news sites, only in my opinion way more. I find it incredibly entertaining.

The second site I want to highlight is something a little different, yet not unexpected. It’s called The Angry Black Woman and it’s a blog written by three black women that offer their opinions on a variety of issues; one of them is eponymously named as the blog. They make a very interesting point that many black women make but few people seem to hear, that being that just because black women might get mad at something doesn’t mean they’re angry all the time. Not that they don’t express their anger at a lot of different topics on this site but I feel their points of view are important, and I agree with many of them, including this latest missive surrounding the naming of Beyoncé’s baby. And their site is set up for traditional commenting.

The last site I’m highlighting is one that I’ve highlighted previously, and someone who deserves a lot of credit for my initially deciding to do some types of list posts in the first place. That site is Basic Blog Tips by Ileane Smith, who just received accolades and kudos from her friend and a long time friend of this blog Kissie. Her site is definitely blogger friendly with the traditional commenting system, and it’s grown in leaps and bounds in the time that I’ve known her. She accepts lots of guest posts on her site as long as they’re social media related, so anyone looking for a good space to highlight themselves should check it out. This is the example of a blog that’s not a black blog written by a black blogger that many people probably already know, and she definitely deserves recognition for her online accomplishments. Why she doesn’t show up on many of these other lists I certainly don’t know. And she’s also got a big time YouTube channel with 65 videos to date; lots of great stuff there as well.

There you have it, the first Black Web Friday. Let me know what you think, and be sure to check these sites out. Until next Friday y’all!