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Microsoft Communities blog portal

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It seems like everyone has a blog these days.  The MSDN blog aggregator, I don't know what else to call it, might have been a place you could go, at one time, to find relevent blogs written by Microsoft employees.  However, these days there are so many bloggers you have to wade through all kinds of stuff you don't care about to find just one interesting post.  The Microsoft Communities blog portal has come to the rescue.  This portal allows you to search Microsoft blogs or posts based on categories.  Better, if you find a category you want to monitor, it will give you an RSS feed for that category. 

Didn't find a category you were looking for?  Then request that one be added.  Once the category is created you'll have a bit of a wait though.  The system depends on bloggers to add their posts or blogs to the categories manually.  Try the drivers category for example.  It didn't exist until a few days ago.  I requested it and added my blog.  So far it appears to be the only blog in that category.  I know people are using this because I'm getting all kinds of referrals from it.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2005
    Microsoft is really making an attempt to improve their content. Their liberal approach to bloggers is very good; however, as you pointed out, it can be difficult to find relevant content.

    The link that refers to the Microsoft Communities blog portal is incorrect in your post - it should be:

    http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalHome.mspx

    In any case, I checked out the listing of BizTalk blogs and was, unfortunately, not surprised to see that most of the blogs were not relevant. I'm not sure what criteria is used to determine if a blog ends up in a particular category; however, the BizTalk category could use some closer scrutiny.
  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2005
    I fixed the link. Thanks Erik.

    Bloggers assign their own blogs to the categories. As far as I know there is no oversite. Bloggers can also assign a category within their blog to a category on the community site, which is what they should be doing to eliminate spamming the communities categories. If you're seeing content that doesn't fit the category, your best bet is to email the blogger.