Why Lotus Journal?

My last project came out of true personal need, a better way to organize, read and keep track of all the Lotus blogs I was consuming. The result was a ton of reading. As the number of blogs in the community increased so did the reading. So, how to cull if you can’t read everything?

Hit counts, over time there has been much talk about this, for one, the use of catchy titles to drive up the numbers. This is a huge help in guiding my reading habit and has become a cornerstone of Planet Lotus. But the hit counts only capture trends and buzz… and aren’t going anywhere; if that’s what’s on your mind. To differentiate the buzz from the quality content I implemented the use of thumbs, yes the little Lotus thumbs up icon to allow members of PL to give a “nice post” to an author and give validation or light to those posts that are great in content but lack in the catchy title department. This never got off the ground. It’s still a part of myPL so feel free to resurrect it. The quest continues.

The more thought I put into it the bigger the idea got. In addition to shedding light on quality Lotus content I wanted to also deliver it beyond the Lotus Bubble. This was months ago when there was a lot of talk about the Yellow Bubble… and then the light bulb went off, of all places from my inbox. A spinoff of UrbanDaddy.com, maybe you’ve heard of it. I was going to create a ‘email only’ magazine (like UrbanDaddy) for the Lotus community. Draw from the amazing talent of bloggers and reach out of the bubble via daily email updates. The updates would contain articles; the best imaginable, as determined by and editorial staff of esteemed member of the community.

In theory it sounded great, but over time I was wrestling with the idea of an ‘email only’ magazine in a very social, very search friendly world, not to mention the Herculean development effort to make it happen. So maybe an hybrid approach, a very open, very prestigious, top notch professional journal for Lotus professionals with a twist, authorship is open all however only articles approved by esteemed Lotus community members will be published; and with that please welcome Lotus Journal to the community.

Lotus Journal will focus on authors, their content, editors and getting as many readers as possible with ties to social media, SEO and email subscriptions to extend the site hopefully beyond the bubble.

For more information take a look at the every changing about page currently at LotusJournal.com.

UPDATE: One last thing. This idea needs your help, please consider getting the word out, and if you have a moment I would truly appreciate to hear your take on the site, like Ben did this morning. I come up with, and create these ideas in a vacuum so they stay true to their purpose. Now, what better way to make it idea grow, then with your added ideas.

Enjoy!