Last week was the first installment of Black Web Friday on this blog and this is the second one. I’m slightly surprised that it actually made the top 10 most visited posts in the last week, but somewhat disappointed that the numbers weren’t higher at the same time. But that’s okay because it’s going to grow, and even if it doesn’t I’m committed to it for the long haul, or at least the next six months or so.

Before I begin, I did want to talk about criteria for a moment, as in do I have any? It’s an intriguing question because as I go along this journey, if you have any way of tracking rankings you’ll notice that some of the people I highlight have lousy rankings. To me that’s not enough to disqualify anyone from being highlighted.

What will disqualify someone is if there’s been no new content in at least 2 months. Now, that’s 2 months from the day I’m researching sites to highlight here, which means right now any site that hasn’t had anything new since the beginning of December. As I add more sites to my list, the date may float, but since I figure that if I make it 6 months I’ll end up highlighting anywhere from 50 to 75 sites overall, my list might be complete before I get there. Now, if I go to the end of the year then it could change up; we’ll see.

The first site I’m highlighting today is called ColorLines is another black news and commentary site that, as it says, focuses on “solutions to today’s racial justice issues”. It’s very much a site that covers hot topic issues, which right now seem to be politics and Etta James; still? 🙂 Actually, even though it’s geared towards a black audience, they also take on issues of other minority groups, as I was impressed with their article titled Charlotte’s First Baby of 2012 Sparks Anti-Latino Hate, where a Latino baby was the first baby of the year born in the Charlotte, NC area and people griped because they believed the press was highlighting a baby born by an illegal alien; people need to get a clue.

The next site I’m highlighting is called iZania, and it’s a black business networking site, not quite along the lines of LinkedIn but it’s intentions are the same. The site is the brainchild of a guy I met on Ryze many years ago named Roger Madison, and even though I don’t go often, I think I was one of the earliest people to sign up in… well, I’m not actually sure when I signed up. I even added this article titled Mixed Messages there. The site has over 8,800 members, and there’s the possibility of making business connections there, but I’m not sure most of us have really taken as much advantage of it as we should.

The final site of the day is easy. This is highlighting my buddy Mitchell Allen of Morpho Designs who’s also looking for beta testers for his software called Parsermonster (he likes the word “monster” for some reason). He’s the guy who actually convinced me to start this series after a bunch of conversations on the topic while playing email chess (in a game that I believe ended in a draw lol). For the Shorty Awards, where I asked people to nominate me in the category of “blogger”, I nominated him in the category of “writing” because he’s just so creative it’s scary. And I literally mean that because in his own way he’ll remind you of a Stephen King type of writer at times, and other times it’s fantasy stuff. And he’s smart; take a look at some of his older posts about Scrabble words, a series he just recently discontinued. Once again, proof that a black blogger doesn’t necessarily have to write on black topics. He definitely deserves to be noticed and on some lists; he’s built up a long time pedigree on multiple sites that shouldn’t continue being overlooked. We’re going to get rich at the same time. 🙂

There we have it, 3 more sites for you to check out, though I’m expecting many of you already know Mitch. Until next time America (Maury Povich’s famous former last words).