Best Taiwan blogger 2011

Who is the best Taiwan blogger 2011?

I'm trying to show you the real Taiwan. Photo from here.

The year is almost over and soon we will get Taiwanderful's best Taiwan blogger of 2011. Since I won last year by popular vote, I am very curious about who will be my successor this year. I was peer judge this time, but I requested, that my blog is not part of the competition and I am very happy, that my wish was granted.

Why I don't want to participate again? The answer is simple: Because I could easily win. And I think it's much better to give a chance for a little recognition to other bloggers, than to win based on the advantages you have in mobilizing your online buddies. This year my blog has more followers and readers and in addition, I could get support of a lot of Slovenian netizens, if I wanted, because my blog Slovenian in Taiwan is repeatedly shared in the Slovenian blogosphere and online media (I'm probably the only serious Slovenian blogger in the Far East). When some of my posts are shared, my traffic spikes sky high for a couple of hours. Not only that, our Slovenian Twitter community is very strong this year, I could be retweeted as much as I wished. This all shows how far I've come as a blogger. This year is just amazing. Including my Slovenian blog, I've written almost 300 posts in 2011! A lot of these were written in the first half of the year, when I just arrived in Taiwan and had a lot of time. After I started to work, my updates became less, but my focus shifted to quality over quantity. Sometimes I was drafting a post for a week, before I published it. Luckily, it was worth the effort, because it was quite well received.

Last year's epic win of the Taiwanderful blog award put me in the spotlight of the expat online community in Taiwan. Imagine, a Slovenian beats all the Americans, Canadians and Aussies - what a shock it was to some. I got a bit more traffic and few more readers, but other than that, it hasn't had any significant effect on me as a Taiwan blogger. I just continued to do my thing as usual. I was never really too engaged in this community, but I was and still am observing it from the sidelines. Sadly, I am not too impressed with what I see this year. Let me go deeper into that.

The problem of the Taiwan expat community is that it's not a community. It's more like a community of groups and most of these groups are small and less relevant in the broader sense. They usually consist of few bloggers, who interact with each other. There is however a main group, a group of the popular Taiwan bloggers, who have a lot of readers and are able to shape a certain kind of image of Taiwan for the world outside. This group is divided in the good and the not so good ones. The good ones really care about the online community and about Taiwan in general, they have no agenda other than pure enthusiasm for this Far Eastern gem. These people are also behind the Taiwanderful blog award, I have great respect for them.

The not so good ones are usually having an agenda. They are mostly writing about politics, history, society and random observations. They are highly critical of others, especially those who don't share the same opinion, but very insecure, if the criticism boomerangs back to them. These bloggers often distort the image of Taiwan and its people, most likely because of a personal issue - they exaggerate, make up stuff, write too hastily and have almost no balanced views on a variety of topics. Generally, they do some harm, but I think their influence is very limited, as most intelligent readers will abandon them very quickly. They end up only writing for like-minded people. This is of course nothing shocking, as every blogging community has these types of bloggers, especially expat communities in Asia. I will of course not mention any of them here, because I don't want to supply them with topics to blog about.

Instead, I'd like to focus on something more positive. I did find two Taiwan related blogs, that I would like to mention here and they are definitely worthy of your time:

Vagabond in Taiwan: Written by Adrienne, an American, who lives in Taipei. What I like about her blog is the simplistic layout, which is delightfully completed with beautiful photos. I generally like to read blogs, where photos tell a story or are a big part of a story - it's also my way of blogging. And in this case, I could say: Great minds think alike. I just dropped my vote for the Vagabond in Taiwan today.

Brennpunkt Taipeh: Written by Klaus, a German, who lives in Taipei. He's more known as a German language blogger, nevertheless, his English posts are excellent as well. It won't shock you to know, that he's a reporter and I have to say a very fine one. I've seldom met someone, who loves Taiwan as much as he does and yet is still very realistic about the good and the bad sides of the country and its people. If you wanna see the real Taiwan, he should be one of your prime sources.

To browse more Taiwan blogs, check these websites and posts:

- Bloggers in Taiwan (listed English language blogs on Taiwan)
- Taiwanderful's blog directory (similar to the link above)
- List of Taiwanese bloggers (native Taiwanese, who blog in Chinese language)

I know I'm very picky, when it comes to reading blogs. For one, I have a very high quality standard for my own blog, and secondly, I don't have a lot of time, that's why I have to set my priorities. Btw, I'm trying to tweak my layout a little, make it cleaner and with less links, but more to the point. As the first step, I have redesigned my table of contents, please check it here and tell me, how you like it. It was a lot of work, but I have to make my blog more professional and that's why I will continue to tweak and redesign until I'm happy with it. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of free time, that's why I'm doing it bit by bit.

I've already written over 1200 posts in the recent 4 years and currently I have between 3000 and 4000 pageviews per day! That's a lot of traffic for a simple blogspot blog and it's even getting more every month. It's very fulfilling to know, that so many people read and appreciate what I've written - I hope that this will continue next year as well. Actually, I'm pretty sure it will.

• Who is your best Taiwan blog this year?
• What was the reason for you to become my regular reader?

I'm looking forward to your answers. Thanks for sticking with me and going through thick and thin. I appreciate it :)

[My TAIWAN page][Photo by MKL, 2011]