An interview with the creators of BloGalaxia

When you visit blogalaxia.com you come away surprised. It’s an extraordinarily well-made site, useful, addictive, and I think it’s going to become the mandatory reference point of the Spanish-speaking (or Spanish-writing?) blogosphere.

Behind blogalaxia are two young Peruvian entrepreneurs who have some interesting ideas about web 2.0, which they shared with me in a recent interview. I invite you to meet the creators of BloGalaxia.

The interview

This interview was done by email. I have to thank Javier and Bruno for their kindness in taking the time to answer my questionnaire.

1. What is BloGalaxia? When was it born?

BloGalaxia is a directory of Latin blogs. A space that lets you quickly find what’s new in the blogosphere in our language, organized by traditional categories (“Personal, Sports, Film.. etc”) or non-traditional ones (“tags”). It’s also a blog search engine that lets you quickly find the articles related to a keyword or keywords. We were born on _October 7, 2005 _(as you can see athttp://www.historiadelosweblogs.com/index.php/2005) as the next step after the birth of PeruBlogs (in July of the same year), thanks to the suggestion of many foreign visitors who told us there was a need for a portal similar to perublogs.

2. What is the spirit of BloGalaxia?

Our main spirit is to listen to our users and act on their suggestions as far as possible. We love reinventing ourselves and always offering new features. We’re driven by the idea of informing, of presenting what others write in a way that gives others quick access to the information.

3. Who is behind BloGalaxia? Can you briefly tell us your personal stories?

Well, let’s try to keep it short:

Javier Albarracín - 34 years old - 8/1/71 " Ever since I was very small I’ve liked solving problems. I remember the magazine Anteojitos that I read as a kid, the numbers and so many things. My passion for computers started at 12; I met Bruno, Jose Antonio and Rafo over a 300 baud modem. Later we ran a BBS together that we kept going for some years. Professionally, I studied business administration at the Universidad de Lima and was a consultant at DiamondCluster International for some years. I currently work at a Peruvian bank as Commercial Intelligence Manager, and in my free time I keep my blog spunk.perublogs.com. My contribution to Blogalaxia is in design and functionality; I complain a lot when something “looks ugly”.

Bruno Kamiche - 35 - 2/11/70 “I’ve been in the world of computers since I was 14, and I didn’t start with home computers but with the “big” machines. The first computer I worked with was a MicroPDP 11/73 from Digital Equipment Corporation, where I learned to program in Basic, Cobol and Fortran), and after that came the PCs and the fabulous Commodore 64. Javier and I have known each other for more than 20 years, and we’ve kept the friendship going despite time and distance. Professionally I work as a consultant in Oracle technologies. My main role is DBA. In my free time I work on developing Javier’s “ideas” and on research. Google is my right hand for anything research-related.”

4. I’ve seen the features of your service, and I find many of them very interesting. Is the code written by you?

The code is our own development. Bruno Kámiche has written hundreds of lines in PHP , an open language, and made use of the MySQL database.

5. How do you organize, coordinate and meet?

The best tool is google talk (before that, yahoo messenger). Of course we also get together a lot at Bruno Kámiche’s house, where every so often one of his 4 kids has a birthday :) or when we organize a barbecue, also at Bruno’s or Jose’s. On weekends we go out a lot too. For coordinating Blogalaxia development… almost everything is messenger and email. We’re teleworkers!

6. Are you planning to make your project open source?

Not for the moment. But we’re not ruling out the idea either.

7. What is BloGalaxia’s infrastructure?

Technologically we use two servers: one for presentation and one for the database. Organizationally we’re a group of friends who maintain it voluntarily.

8. What is the site’s traffic?

Our traffic can be checked at http://www.webstats4u.com/s?tab=1&link=1&id=3726358 but lately it hovers around 12 thousand visits a day.

9. How is it funded?

:) if it weren’t for the fact that we have no expense other than the servers, it would be very hard. We pay for the servers with advertising that we show on some inner pages.

10. What about advertising income? Is it substantial? Do you think you can make money with advertising, or is that just a myth?

Our advertising income exceeds (slightly) our hosting costs. You can make a lot of money if you have big traffic (for example 100 thousand visitors a day); big income is not a myth. For now we’re content with paying for two good servers.

11. Is there interest in taking venture capital?

Honestly, right now we’re fine; we’re not in it for profit. Although it would be interesting, for example, to have a technology infrastructure that lets us get past the limitations we have today (bandwidth, site updates.. etc). If it’s to improve, why not?

12. What is the feature you like most about blogalaxia?

Personally we really like the search engine and the front page. Checking the front page every half hour is a must. You’re surprised by the topics; it’s the most interesting thing there is, visiting the front page and finding out about so many new topics. It’s “the magazine we always wanted to have”. The search engine is also very interesting, especially because it returns topics ordered by date.. the latest on a topic in your hands.

13. What blogs do you read?

Honestly our list is very long; once you get used to the blogalaxia front page it’s very hard to stop visiting hundreds of blogs. Although, well, each of us may have a favorite or two.

14. What do you think of the concept of web 2.0?

Collaboration, users. We have a motto: “web 2.0: the users have arrived”. The content of blogalaxia is very web2.0. If the tools didn’t exist we’d have an empty page.

15. What Web 2.0 projects have inspired BloGalaxia?

Definitely a lot of Technorati. Someone out there has said we’re the Latin Technorati.. but we feel a looong way off. It would be blindness to think otherwise. With less than a year on the air. Still, we do feel that technically we can compete in the future.

16. Do you aim to be the Spanish-language technorati?

We’d like that a lot. Honestly we didn’t see it that way at the beginning, but little by little it took shape. Maybe what sets us apart is that we think of our site as a magazine. (Javier Albarracín personally says it’s an “addictive magazine”)

17. What other projects on the internet do you find interesting?

Flickr, Bloglines, Linkedin…

18. What kind of projects would you like to see on the Spanish-American web?

We’d really like to see a *.icio.us in Spanish.

19. What room is there to collaborate with you?

Plenty, obviously; that’s our spirit. We believe we haven’t let down anyone who has made us a suggestion. We’re very receptive.. maybe it’s the spirit of the BBSes we were born in, where the idea was to run a site for the benefit of the users.

20. **Thank you very much **

Thanks for your questions, Javier, Bruno.

As you can see, Javier and Bruno are steeped in the zeitgeist of web 2.0.

Good for blogalaxia, and we invite you to join the site, because it’s going to give people a lot to talk about.