Blog Sites Heat Up!

Fuelmyblog.com has just been launched, and promises to be a popular online blogger gathering place. Kevin Dixie, a British blogger based in London and La Rochelle, France created the site to allow bloggers to publicize their blogs for free. Fuelmyblog also lets users recommend blogs to their friends and networks by rating each entry with votes.

The site is a little bit like a combination of MyBlogLog, Digg and Netscape, which is refreshing and fun. Kevin will be introducing a range of weekly podcasts and competitions in conjunction with interviews and a blog chat radio broadcast as expanded features of the innovation. In a press release via PRWeb, Kevin elaborated on his vision and how it came about: "I came up with the idea after writing my own blog and wanted to find a site that brought bloggers together and enabled easy reading within a couple of clicks. I always thought of blogs as just online diaries and never realized there was so much good creative content in the blogosphere."

Fuelmyblog is almost immediately likable! Part of this has to do with the visual aspect or impression the site leaves on you. I am not sure if it intentional or not, but the designers put together a gripping combination of colors and frames. The lion staring at new visitors while chewing provokes immediate laugher, and being able to see so many categorized blogs is interesting too. This site is evidence that some of our communities need to tone up their outer wear. Fuelmyblog is colorful without being too busy or noisy. Many sites have become so bland and boring in their attempts to reduce noise and appear "tech" worthy.

Blogs are categorized and a transparent mouse-over informs you about each of the blogs displayed. I actually signed up for the listing, and it was simpler than MyBlogLog or any of the others. I am officially awaiting acceptance as I write this, so we shall see what turns up on this new blogger hangout.

Clicking on the transparent pop-up makes the info frame static and offers several options to the user. You can "fuel" the selected blog, snuff out the blog or visit the blog. I hope there will be some accountability here, as this could end up being a sabotage nightmare otherwise. Perhaps there should be degrees of "snuffing", so that overzealous or angry bloggers will have to read more to actually hurt someone.

I like the site a lot! It is clean and simple, which really should be the criteria for any new site these days. Kevin and his people are adding even more functionality in the near future and I know that user feedback will make the site even more attractive. People are going to like this site, and you should check it out. I just hope the lion does not start eating the blog thumbnails.