This is week #17 of Black Web Friday, and it’s a couple of days before Mother’s Day, so if you didn’t already know about it or didn’t remember it you now know. I’m not doing anything special with this post for that reason, but I have come to a decision about the series.

I started the series with a specific purpose, that being to help bring to the forefront the reality that there are websites and blogs written by people of color. It’s been a glorious and fun journey, but in looking at things now I don’t think I’ve been able to achieve the purpose I wanted to achieve.

What’s happened is that most visitors know what’s coming on Friday, and since overall it’s not their cup of tea they’re just skipping these posts. The initial hope had been that folks would at least take a look, see the topics black folks might be writing about, and decide if the topic was worth looking at. Instead, not only are they bypassing it, but most of the time the people and websites included here are bypassing it as well. Since there’s no real way to achieve its purpose as a live event, so to speak, I think it’s time to put it on hiatus.

But the hiatus isn’t today. The hiatus will be May 25th, the last Friday of the month, heading into Memorial Day weekend. That means 2 more weeks after this one, unless they’re suddenly an outpouring of people clamoring for more; yeah, like that’s going to happen. It’s been fun, but all good things must end.

With that said, let’s get into it.

This is definitely something different. The blog Beyond Black And White is managed by Christelyn D. Karazin, and is more of a consortium of bloggers with a common goal. There are 5 other black women and one Asian male that write on the site, which means there are often multiple posts on the same day. The topic are pretty general; they can be fashion, politics, technology… pretty much just like every day life, with one exception. There are also lots of articles about interracial relationships and race relations in general. As I said, it’s something different and I like it, so check it out. It’s a Livefyre commenting system.

For once I’m highlighting a new blog, but there’s a reason for it. It’s called The Money Chat and it all about financial issues. Dorethia R. Conner is the owner of the blog and she has other contributors that help her out. She gets a mention because she just went the self hosted route in April after writing on Blogger for a long time, so there are a lot of older articles there that I assume she’s not going to move to the new space, yet are worth checking out. Unfortunately the new blog is also a Disqus blog, so I might read but obviously won’t be commenting.

Stella Anokam‘s eponymously named blog talks about internet marketing, something I know a lot of people love to read about. She talks a lot about blogging, getting traffic, business tips, building mailing lists, and social media. There’s a lot of good stuff there and it’s written concisely and well. One topic in particular that I bet a lot of you would like to check out is this post titled Profit Financially From Blogging In 9 Simple Strategic Steps, For Beginners. And it’s a standard commenting system; can’t beat that.

Finally today I present another black news and commentary source, Your Black Bloggers. Multiple writers comment on the topics of the day, which includes President Obama saying yesterday that he now endorses same sex marriages (about time). Let me warn you; everything here isn’t necessarily warm and fuzzy, since some of the opinions and topics will be perceived as controversial. But being a little bit edgy hasn’t hurt that many people, has it?

That’s it for today; two more weeks to go.
 

Could it be that time already? Yes, it’s time for another edition of Black Web Friday; yay! I don’t have anything else to add so let’s get right into it.

David Richeson is a young guy but his site 360° Success offers motivational posts based on something called “hermetic philosophy”. It’s all very uplifting stuff and personally, I don’t think enough people are checking it out. I found one of his posts titled The Power of Why a very interesting and short read that explains why we all need to probe more, ask those questions we might be afraid to ask because we’re afraid someone will look at us funny; great stuff. It’s a traditional blog commenting system but he moderates comments.

I met Danyelle Little on Twitter first and discovered her blog The Cubicle Chick from there, which is what got her listed on my 29 More Black Social Media Influencers post last year. In a way hers is a non-niche blog that’s more geared towards women than men, even though there are a lot of things there that men would also be interested in. She’ll talk tech and entertainment, then she’ll switch to child rearing and losing weight. Yet it’s all done in an entertaining way; I like her style. Standard blog commenting system.

I’m just going to be truthful here; many of you probably won’t want to visit this blog I’m highlighting, but I think you should. It’s written by Brother Jesse Muhammad and titled Brother Jesse Blog, and it’s about issues concerning black people, plain and simple. He doesn’t hide his loyalties or opinions on what he has to say, and that’s pretty refreshing to me. A post that particularly impressed me was on the topic of black on black violence because often when there’s a crime where a black person is killed by a white person someone else white eventually says “how come you don’t complain when a black person kills another black person?” Yes, it happens every single time and I’m tired of hearing it and Brother Jesse addressed it; good for him. This is a Blogger blog.

Oliver Willis‘ eponymously named blog is about politics, and I love his tagline: “Like Kryptonite to Stupid”. Occasionally he’ll write about his favorite football team (the team I hate most, being a Cowboys fan), but his political point of view is illuminating and he’s got the chops to back it up, whether you agree or disagree with what he has to say. A very intriguing piece he wrote in February concerned the Tea Party; check it out if you dare. lol

There you go, 4 diverse blogs for your review this week. Then again, these posts really are about diversity in more than one form, which is why I’m doing them. Enjoy your weekend folks!
 

Week number 10 of Black Web Friday is here, and the series is progressing well. I have to admit that I’m not sure part of what I’m hoping for is working, that being to show other black people some of what’s out there as well as everyone else. This is important as well because there can’t be any true support of minority websites if the minorities being written about aren’t helping out in their own way. At least that’s how I see things.

Of course, the big news this week in the United States has been the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida and whether this was a true self defense case or the case of another young black man being gunned down for, well, being black. There’s a lot of America that, in this case, have rallied around the cause, but it’s always been there, whether it’s always resulted in people being killed or not.

A part of why I do this series is to show a humanity that many people may not know exists, as well as expose people to a different way that people think based on their background. If you’ve followed the series you’ll realize that I’ve shown some sites that are geared towards black perspectives, and others were you wouldn’t know the person was black unless you saw their picture. That’s all on purpose; no one person represents us all.

And with that, let’s get to this week’s listing.

I initially featured Justice Wordlaw’s eponymously named blog last June in my first series titled 21 Of The Top Black Social Media Influencers. At that time I said he talked about internet marketing but he really talks about business in general, as well as web stuff. I was pretty impressed that he wrote this piece recently, Entrepreneurship, Is It For You? Maybe Not> since I’ve been talking about marketing so much lately. Young guy moving forward with business on his Livefyre comment blog; check him out.

Torrey McGraw writes Grind and Thrive, which is a business motivational blog with a lot of positive posts and, something a little different, many posts and interviews with people in the music business. It’s very interesting reading and could help offer a different perspective to get your mind going in the right direction. He also just became a new father a couple of weeks ago and I almost broke my no Disqus blog rule but I didn’t. Still, if you don’t care go over and give him some love.

Also named after herself, Monique Neeley writes and talks about social media through a mix of writing and videos. She really keeps up to date on the latest trends in social media, with one of her latest posts about Pinterest, and she also has posts on internet marketing and has interviews as well. And she’s a military wife, so since I’m a military child I feel an affinity for her. She has a Disqus blog, just so you know.

Finally there’s Black Like Moi, which is kind of a combination blog/black news site. I say it that way because there are a ton of posts there on black issues, entertainment and politics, but every single post is formatted like a blog, waiting for comments that, well, most of the posts don’t have. Yet I still like the site because it does have lots of content, and it’s a standard blog commenting system which I believe makes it easy for anyone to participate on.

That’s all for this week; enjoy and have a great weekend.
 

Welcome to week #9 of Black Web Friday, my once a week homage to websites owned by black companies, individuals, etc. If you want to know why I do this you can check out the very first Black Web Friday post.

This week I learned that one of the people I highlighted on my 2/24/12 post, Wayne Sutton, was the recipient of an award for being one of the top ten Blacks in Technology for 2011, awarded to him at the SXSW conference; way to go Wayne! It’s been a pretty good 12 months for Wayne as he was also featured last summer in a story by CNN on black people in technology and how they’re often overlooked. Seems my quest isn’t just my quest after all. 🙂

With that said let’s get on with the proceedings. The first person I want to highlight today is a lady named Abiola Abrams, whose website is called The Passionista Playbook. She talks about fashion, celebrities, relationships, and basically living your life passionately so that you can enjoy it more. And man, does she look like she’s enjoying life, and in a big way! It’s mainly geared towards women and yet some of what she puts out is interesting for men as well. It’s a Disqus blog, which means y’all will never see me commenting there, but it’s nice anyway.

Talk about another really cool blog, this one written by Thaddeus Howze, A Matter of Scale talks about blacks in science fiction, of all things, and science fiction in general. He’s also a big time fiction writer and an IT specialist and I’m surprised that my boys Mitch Allen and John Garrett haven’t found him yet. But I figure now that I’ve mentioned him they will and they’ll enjoy it a lot. I loved his article titled Is It Important To Show People Of Color In Science Fiction a bunch; of course my response would be “yes”. It’s a WordPress.com blog, which means I can comment, but if I forget to go back & look at it I’d never know if he responded to me or not.

The website Your Black World is another black news site that offers… well, let’s just say that it’s a little different from other news sites I’ve highlighted to this point. Most of the stories you’ll read here aren’t in regular news and the commentary doesn’t always support black people just because they’re black, which is spot on and definitely a fairer way to report and comment on the news. Frankly I think it’s very entertaining and thought provoking and I hope you check it out.

That’s it for today. If you visit any of these folks, don’t forget to tell them they got some love!