Farmers Weekly Interactive is online community of the year

Farmers Weekly Interactive was names the Online Community of 2008 last night at the
Association of Online Publishers Awards.



According to the judges:

"FWI demonstrated there can be a light-hearted approach to a b2b site, providing social interaction and community tools relevant to its members and pushing the business media boundaries with ‘muddy matches’"

I'm thrilled for them but not at all surprised. This pioneering team has worked so hard and so imaginatively to create a real online community around its core product Farmers Weekly magazine. RBI as a whole has learned much for them so congratulations to them.

RBI did very well at the awards, also bringing home gongs for Business Website 2008 (XpertHR), Business Online Advertising Team and the overall Business Online Publisher of the Year. One might almost say we wiped the floor with the competition. I'll allow myself a morning's smugness in the light of all the uncertainty.

Farmer Frank does live chat Q&A.

There's no stopping the folks at Farmers Weekly now they've discovered CoverItLive.

Last night they conducted a "live surgery" with their very own antediluvian agrilebrity agony aunt, Farmer Frank.

Highly successful, by all accounts, with more people pitching in with questions than the poor old boy could cope with.

An imaginative use of the chogging software by the Farmers Weekly team. Brilliant.

You can replay the Q&A here.

Farmers Weekly micro-blogging

Farmers Weekly has been inspired by the Liverpool Daily post's recent live blog experiment.

They are using Cover It Live to micro-blog their way through the afternoon.

I was most interested to read that one of the team has chocolates on his desk so I'm just popping down to see them and give them some encouragement. No other reason.