The first and biggest is COMMENTS! Registration is no longer required to post a comment on any post. Of course if you already have an account you can still login to ensure your comments are attributed to you, but those who don’t can now post a comment without any long term commitment. Also, on the right you can see some of the recent comments so you’ll always know what the active discussions are. This was the most requested thing we’ve heard from people since our last redesign and we’re excited to see where it leads.

The next change is also something that was heavily requested, and that is a change to the ADS on the sites. You’ll immediately notice fewer of them, but what might not be as obvious is those smaller square ones to the right are specific to this city only and are being sold for a flat rate for a period of time rather than a confusing CPM/traffic/network model. Depending on the city, these range from $7-$175 for a full week. If you purchase one, during that time your ad will be the only one in that spot and will show on every page. We set these up both to make it easier for smaller local businesses to get their ads on our site, and also to help us bring in ads that relate better to our local audiences. Also, keeping these sites online is expensive and every little bit helps.

There are a bunch of other things we changed but we’ll leave those to you to investigate and take advantage of. Hope you like it, and we look forward to seeing you in the comments!!

Love,
The folks at MBHQ

See more at the Best of Metroblogging.

We hereby invite you to take part in the first International Metroblogging Streetart Contest.

Streetart is a fancy name for Graffiti. I’ve never seen any Graffiti in Tokyo either, but hey, we like challenges.

Thanks to till in Berlin for this.

In his words, here is how it works:

Metroblogging means global, which implies that all submissions of participating cities will first run against each other “locally” and then the top compete on a global level to find out where’s the hottest spot for streetart in the world.

To participate, follow those steps:

1) We setup a flickr pool – metroblogging streetart
http://www.flickr.com/groups/metrobloggingstreetart/

Feel free to join.

Each one of your submission should make it in the pool. If you don’t have/like Flickr – feel free to email them in to tokyometblog’at’yahoo’dot’com – I’ll post them for you. In this case, let me know whom to give credit to (photographer and streetartist).

2) The contest runs for two weeks. Then a voting process will start to find a city’s Top 3 streetart pieces.

3) After the local heros are chosen, we run another global contest to crown king of all. Top of the world, Master of the Universe – you know the deal! The Top 3 from each city will enter this contest. Watch this blog for more information.

Tags: Tokyo, streetart, contest

towers in kuala lumpur

Originally uploaded by le dieu.

Metroblogging continues its Crusade East, with the addition of Kuala Lumpur, the city no-one spells correctly the first time.

There are now 8 Asia Pacific countries represented on Metroblogging; more than any other region.
w00t!

Have a look, join, enjoy !

Sorry for inconvenience.
Now we are working hard on this issue, so this will be fixed soon !!