If I haven’t mentioned it already, all the 2nd Culture sites are going through a version 2.0 revamp. But one of the elements that has been wildly successful are the DiaBLOGue format we tested out on the Panda Girls site.

The idea is simple. A blog post is usually written from a single point of view or individual. Sometimes interviews can provide a new POV, but those posts are usually labeled as such “Interview with…”, and one is the interviewer, and interviewee - hardly a dialogue on equal ground.

With the DiaBLOGue it’s more that the blog engine now becomes a stage for two opposite POVs to responding in tandem, laced together for a dynamic effect. In our employment, we used comedy as our genre, invented characters, and represented those personalities with comic strip-like visuals.

After creating the template, the posts are fast and effortless - but the snag is trying to make them humorous. We’re not always successful, so when we aren’t, we usually lean on character-revealing.

The response for this format has been very positive, and I think it’s an example of taking something that is quite common today, and just giving it a little twist. I’ve since been thinking of other common tools to twist - nothing quite as successful has come yet.