I love watching new blogs develop. I discovered a few months back that high street fashion chain Karen Millen has started blogging last year, and I've become an avid reader. Maybe it's because I spend my working life helping people get their start in social media, but watching a young blog find its voice and style over the first year or so of its life just fascinates me. There's something really touching about the Karen Millen blog, because there's something very slightly amateur hour about it. It's hosted on wordpress.com without a mapped domain name, and there's a very clear sense of real people writing the post, without a descent into marketing speak. Even the photography is evidently done by the posters rather than seasoned pros. Compare these two pictures, from a post about a Karen Millen dress won in a charity competition:

    <li class="asset-thumbnail on"><a href="https://addersdotblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/8102a-6a00d8341da3af53ef0120a95b21ee970b-pi.jpg"><img alt="Louiseroper" src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/772/2009/06/6a00d8341da3af53ef0120a95b21ee970b-75pi-1.jpg" /></a></li>

<li class="asset-thumbnail"><a href="https://addersdotblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/b4596-6a00d8341da3af53ef01310fc2082e970c-pi.jpg"><img alt="Louiseroper" src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/772/2009/06/6a00d8341da3af53ef01310fc2082e970c-75pi-1.jpg" /></a></li>
Louiseroper

The picture on the left is the original from the blog post, the one on the right a tweaked version just done in Preview.app on my Mac (I did nothing more than auto-levels). But that's cool. That feels more authentic. I get the same feeling of relationship and honesty that I do when I watch my bloggers do things like this. Good work, Karen Millen team.