Let me start off by saying that I was hoping to be the first one to announce Bullard’s permanent blog – Bullog, but it seems that people were already on to my movements like flies to faeces late last night (like this guy who documented the entire process) so I lost all sense of urgency and already this morning the SA blogosphere is abuzz.

The truth is, and contrary to unpopular belief, no one at The Times (except Bullard himself of course!) knew what he was going to say in his column last Sunday and what the impact may be. It has been a tough week for many of us who’ve had to deal with the fallout and the accusations that have come with it, but I stand by my initial response that overall it was good publicity for us.

Gregor and I literally had to drop everything we were working on to try and make the most of the situation and I feel we did a reasonably good job by setting up a temporary blog and recording some videos. For the record though, none of this was planned and Bullard was not coached in anyway or form, including what he said in the video and the comments he posted on other blogs.

I was planning on pitching the idea of a blog to Bullard in a month or so, since I knew it would probably be a tough sell (it always is to print journos) and I didn’t hold much hope of this idea coming to fruition. Instead, once Bullardgate hijacked the Internet for a few days and David saw the power of the medium, at his request I was forced to bring that deadline forward by a month and started development on a permanent blog late last week.

So the stark irony of the whole situation is that Bullard would probably never have blogged if it hadn’t been for the response he received from bloggers. [Ed. I’ve re-read this paragraph five times and can't lose the big smile on my face!]

Make no mistake, after a few brief encounters with him, he’s done his research really well and has some great ideas and concepts for his new blog. If you were hoping for a white elephant, I suggest looking elsewhere because even I am intrigued with what comes next!

Now that the thunderstorm in a tea-cup (A.K.A Bullardgate) has been downgraded to a light drizzle, I thought it would be useful to reflect on what happened in the South African blogosphere yesterday and highlight some of the more obvious issues.

The first thing that was evident is the sense of unity and the feeling of “belonging” to a community that local bloggers clearly have. Without this prerequisite, I doubt that such a big deal would have been made of Bullard’s column, since it was as recently as 18 months ago that bloggers were a relatively isolated and unorganised bunch in this country. I guess we can thank Stork Margarine and Madiba and er! never mind.

Secondly, bloggers are more like journalists than they like to think. They are vocal, opinionated and bunch together like a brigade of Spartans when they feel threatened or attacked. They both extol the same dogma – Freedom of Speech and the quest for truth — but fail to achieve the Holy Grail that is complete objectivity.

Thirdly, people still read the newspaper and mainstream journalists continue to hold the balance of power in this country. There are other individuals, including “bloggers”, that have said far worse things about other bloggers and the blogosphere, but for some reason it is only really given credibility when a well-known journo, who is clearly being facetious, writes a column in a prominent newspaper. Even “Zuma scathing” Bullard was surprised about the response he got. Go figure!

And finally, to get down to the nuts and bolts of it, the real winners on the day were David Bullard and Vincent Maher. Both managed to significantly extend their own profiles whilst increasing traffic to their respective web sites. Bullard has successfully moved his brand into the online space and now has a promising podcasting and blogging career ahead of him as well as a politcal one too?

Maher, the “Che Guevara of the South African Blogosphere”, enjoyed considerable traffic and jumped a few notches up the blog rankings whilst simultaneously promoting Amatomu.com, which most bloggers used as their aggregator of choice to monitor the conversation. Ironically, no one questioned his motives since he does work for a competing media company, which is something I dare to say a professional journalist would’ve spotted.

Overall, it’s good to see the local blogoshere growing so rapidly and spreading its wings, but it still has a long way to go before it comes close to reaching maturity. In the meantime, can’t we all just get along???

Ah, who ever said that Frequently Asked Questions actually needed to contain any Answers?

Definitely not the South African Department of Communications that’s for sure. They are clearly still working on that definition…

One thing that I would like answered (excuse the shameful pun):
Do you think they’re confused about what’s supposed to be in an FAQ or just don’t have the answers to those questions themselves?

Thanks Riaan