When Niche Marketing Goes Too Far

When Niche Marketing Goes Too Far

There will be longer posts about this on the ABW and Laptop Mag later today, but I just needed to get this out of my system:

BlackBird, the browser for African Americans

WAT

Blackbird was developed on the simple proposition that we, as the African American community, can make the Internet experience better for ourselves and, in doing so, make it better for everyone. Primarily we believe that the Blackbird application can make it easier to find African American related content on the Internet and to interact with other members of the African American community online by sharing stories, news, comments and videos via Blackbird.

In turn, we can provide you with up-to-date information about what’s hot in our community as well as news and user recommendations related to all things African American.

Essentially it’s Firefox but tweaked to add some black-specific features like Black Search and Black News and Black Video.  You think I’m exaggerating — I AM NOT.  Just go look at the website.

I’ve been playing with it for a minute, and my first criticism is that the social networking button only includes MySpace and facebook.  Even I–oreo that I am–know that Hi5 is the black social network.  Why isn’t it included?  I’m very suspect now.

Okay, back to work.

(Thanks Vylar!)

25 Top Black Superheroes of All Time?

25 Top Black Superheroes of All Time?

Naamen wrote a great piece taking BlackVoices.com to task for their list of top black superheroes.  I can’t say I’m surprised about that, though, as BlackVoices is an AOL joint, so it’s mainly about commercial interests.  But I thought it would be fun to come up with an alternate list.  So go read Naamen’s column and nominate your favorite black superheroes.

Not being an afficionado of the genre myself, I don’t know that many to begin with.  I do like John Stewart from the Justice League cartoon and, of course, I think Storm is pretty damn awesome.  Other than that, I am woefully ignorant.