This week I welcome a local celebrity, Matt, who's been selecting Blogs BD (this is what we call webcomics in France : BD = Bande Dessinée = Comic Strips) for you back when your grandma was still reading Brer Rabbit (since 2006, as a matter of fact, which, on the internet scale, ehh). For those among you who never heard about his website, know that Matt is the sole analogical human being behind the highly numerical website BlogsBD.fr, a webcomics aggregation machine of formidable efficiency. We'll step a little more on the geek side, this week, just a little bit :)

Oghme Comics : Hi, Matt. You're animating BlogsBD.fr, the first French portal of webcomics news. Before we begin, could you tell us who you are, what is your personal and professional background ?

Matt BlogdBD.fr : I'm an old, almost 30  geek, software consultant, loosely trying to shun the "programmer" etiquette sticked on his forehead.

Oghme Comics : What are your relationships with the comics industry in general ? What brought you to investigate webcomics ?

Matt BlogdBD.fr : Reading for my own pleasure is my main relation to the comics industry ! Since I was a kid, beginning with my parents comics collection, then with my own, which never stopped growing over the years. I first discovered online comics with the English webcomic MegaTokyo, and didn't really read many others, until several years later, when I came upon French Blogs BD, which sent my online reading time sky-rocketing, then I created BlogsBD.fr which didn't help me to slow down, to my greatest pleasure.

Oghme Comics : Can you quickly retrace the history of Blogsbd.fr : from the beginning to the present state of star of the French webcomic scene ? Which were the up and downbeats in the process ?

Matt BlogdBD.fr : A friend of mine designed a news aggregator for referencing of "intimist" bogs, system which I enjoyed on a reader's point of view (it was a little bit more visual and comfortable than a RSS feedsreader), then on a blogger's pov, as I began measuring  the system's impact on my site's daily visits, for each new post. This acted as an incentive to publish new content, which was encouraging for the writer, and at the same time, there was no traffic drain because the article couldn't be read directly from the portal. I reproduced the same pattern, only for webcomics, first because I felt a personal need for it (the "email-like" RSS interface for text based blogs didn't well suit illustration based blogs), then because I often found the same blogs in webcomics' blogrolls, which provided a convenient base to start building a common list, which in turn would benefit from being shared publicly.

Little by little, the number of visitors increased, hence the site's influence as it drew visits back to the referenced blogs. On the negative side : criticism relating to the blog selection. On the positive side : bloggers thanking me for the visits I redirected to their place, and readers pleased with their discovering of new blogs. Then, as the system evolved, I refined the functionalities (more editorial notes, or less..., multiple selection lists...) but the base principle really haven't changed that much.







Oghme Comics : Let's talk about the editorial process : this is where the very special appeal of BlogsBD.fr comes from in our opinion : you can feel the human being behind the blog. Do you maintain all this by yourself ?

Matt BlogdBD.fr : Yes, all by myself, even if I ask readers/bloggers for advice on a regular basis. The editorial process is quite straightforward, really : I come by blogs through others' blogrolls, or through emails and comments, and I add them in if I believe they do fit. With the latest version of the BlogsBD website, released in January 2009, you can choose between multiple selection lists, and the editorial process also became less "stressful" (before that, when a blog was dropped from a list, it could loose 90% of its traffic all of a sudden), as this added a way of buffering more blogs without overcrowding selection lists.

Oghme Comics : We believe that in the French online comics scene, there still is a lot of room for expansion. Since you began observing the French blogosphere, did you see trends building, changes ? In terms of themes, quality, creativity ?

Matt BlogdBD.fr : I didn't remark specific trends. We have quantity now, but as for quality, proportions seem stable enough to me. There's some pseudo stardom/glory buzz from time to time too, but they relate more to the blogging process than to Comics specifically.


Oghme Comics : Let's go on the "geek side of the force" for a minute :) Can you tell us (without revealing your secret recipe) how your web platform operates ? Did you design it from scratch ? How about your typical "Webcomics Night" ? The linuxian in me is curious !
 

Matt BlogdBD.fr : Secret is... there's no secret. I've always willingly answered technical questions I received. Not for the sake of "forced transparency", but rather because any geek likes to talk about his baby, rather of only discussing comics. Yes, I designed it from scratch, except for the RSS parsing which uses SimplePie (and at the very beginning, MagpieRSS). Principle is an aggregation of regularly visited feeds, which, in return, feed a "quick posts" database.

There isn't a "typical Webcomics Night", really, as my evenings tend to be packed with so many different activities. One of the great benefits of this agregator over the standard blogging I practised before, is that it doesn't need constant attention from my part to be able and live its life, which enables me to focus on the part I feel like doing at a precise moment (programming, editorial activity, design), except in times of bug-triggered-crisis, of course. The latest, yet unrealeased, still unfinished feature I'm cooking up right now, will enable users to build their own playlist (between the 600 or so referenced blogs) and stop being subject to the webmaster's dubious tastes !

Oghme Comics : On last question : the webcomics sphere is beginning to really go internationnal ; this is one of the internet's greatest asset : the translating process of printed comics is a coslty process, which is not the case when it comes to webcomics. BlogsBD.fr both lists French and English sites. Got some thoughts to share ?

Matt BlogdBD.fr : I'm no specialist on the subject, but wasn't the webcomic world international to begin with (I doubt the idea originated in one place) and then evolved as bridges were built between languages and creative sources ? I don't know, I' haven't made my mind up on the matter.

Oki doki. 'Nough for today :) Thanks to Matt for giving me some of his precious time, and as a conclusion, let's dig in some stats !