London By London
London by London is a weekly London email newsletter made up entirely of reader contributions. It's well worth signing up to.
As a user-driven source of London insider information on the internet, it bears a family resemblance to this Open Guide, and the two are worth comparing in some detail.
Both are
- dynamic
- dependent on reader contributions
- sense of community
- not commercially driven.
There are also clear differences. London By London is owned and controlled by a benevolent dictatorship, with no pretensions to democracy. It is intended to entertain and has an audience of some 10,000. It can alert people to particular events in the coming week. It raises some revenue which allows for full-time editors, while remaining basically free at present.
On the downside, LBL is obviously transient and suffers a real problem in that people tend to ask the same questions over and again. It can get stuck in a creative rut. No reservoir of knowledge is being created, except possibly in readers' minds. People ask questions that can better be answered by a bit of googling.
In many ways LBL and the Open Guide complement each other well, and would possibly make natural partners.
LBL recently released a dead trees book of highlights, as I imagine the London Open Guide might possibly consider doing in the event that it evolved sufficiently to be better than Lonely Planet and its ilk.