Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim recently announced a contest – write about why you read Marketing Pilgrim and you will be entered to win $500.  I thought I would take that as an opportunity to write about the other blogs I read and why.  If our number comes up in for the $500, it will be donated to the March of Dimes (someday I’ll write about why I love that charity so much).

First, here’s why I spend a few hours a week reading blogs:

Information gathering.  I probably wouldn’t know about the Techcrunch 40, Blogrush, Google Gadgets, or Google’s presentation software without my daily dose from the blogs I read.  I certainly wouldn’t see those items in the local newspaper or in the Economist.

Commentary. Bloggers aren’t journalists (most aren’t anyway) and I like that. I like to get a dose of commentary with my news, both from the original poster and from their readers. The instant give-and-take makes it far more interesting to me than just reading a wire service article. 

Community.  I see a lot of the bloggers at industry conferences, on Facebook and in other forums. I also like to participate in the comments.  On many sites, a real sense of community is developed in the comments.

What blogs are my favorites?

• 10e20 - The Winfields write intelligently about search, social marketing and Photoshop.
• Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim - Andy’s site does a great job of keeping me up with technology news along with the “why.” In fact, last week I received an email from one of our advertisers citing one of the Pilgrim’s posts.
• AVC - A VC (get it?), Fred Wilson, writes passionately about technology and music.
• Bruce Clay, Inc - Written with spunk and flair, BCI’s “the Lisa” talks about all things SEO.
• Feld Thoughts - Brad Feld is a VC with Mobius Venture Capital.  I have a strong affinity for Mobius because they backed the first company I co-founded, eCoverage, but Brad’s also a great thinker and writer on technology.
• Graywolf’s SEO Blog - Michael Gray gets the details of search and social media like nobody else. Often scathing, often hilarious.
• Search Engine Journal - Loren Baker has put together a go-to site where you can follow the latest news on search engines.  And, he lets me guest write for SEJ!
• Search Engine Roundtable - If you don’t have time to follow the world of online marketing forums, SER is great because they take the time to follow them and they share the important threads with all of us.
• SEOmoz - SEOmoz is a Seattle-based company that likes to share it’s search knowledge.  An amazingly open company and a wonderful community of readers add to the discussion.
• Shoemoney - Jeremy Schoemaker’s blog is about how to make money online.  While there are 1000 blogs about making money online, Jeremy has had actual success as an arbitrager and is quite open about his techniques.
• Silicon Alley Insider- Henry Blodget is my favorite target on the impact of the mortgage crisis but I still enjoy his writing.  One negative note is that this blog has a lot of posts per day.
• techipedia - Tamar Weinberg is one of the leading practitioners in social media and write candidly about her likes and dislikes in the space.

Finally, a note about how I read blogs. I read everything via RSS in Google Reader. It’s not perfect, but it’s a very solid tool and gives me a way to quickly skim my favorite sites to see what’s new in my world.  If you’re reading this on our website, I highly recommend that you try Google Reader for a week just to see if you like it.