iWeb Communities: Blog

This is an interview of Dominic Arpin, a famous blogger, based in Montréal, Canada. You can find him at dominicarpin, a website hosted at iWeb, along with other video websites. The original interview was published here, with the content (humbly) translated in English by ourselves.

Can you tell us about your journey to the blog’s readers, for those who don’t know you yet? Can you present us your interest for new media?

I have practised journalism on TV during more than 15 years at TQS and TVA. Since my beginnings as a reporter, technology, video games, and Internet were my topics of choice. In 2006, I was entitled “Patrouilleur du Net” at TVA. During one year, my job was to go through blogs, video-sharing blogs and social networks for the news bulletins of LCN and TVA. It’s also at that time that I begun to blog profesionnally on Canoë’s website (doa.blogue.canoe.ca), plus also writing a web column at the “Journal du Montréal”. 

In 2007, I began to be a host, writer and researcher at Vlog, a show dedicated to the best Internet videos, a tv show I envisioned. 10 shows are produced. After stopped for a few months, the show airs again, successfully, since September 2008.

In february 2008, I launched a new blog at the adress www.dominicarpin.ca, an independent website. After discussing with many other bloggers, I decided to host my blog at iWeb.

Can you tell us more about dominicarpin.ca, WebTV Hebdo, and Vlog? For instance, about their beginnings, about the topics, production and also about the audience, communities, and trafic?

To sum it up, I started dominicarpin.ca to finally own the content I was publishing on the Internet, which was not the case at Canoë. The Wordpress software allowed me also to embed videos and offer the opportunity to leave hyperlinks to commenters, two features unavailable at Canoë.

I use the blog mainly to express myself on what I am doing and also to publish my Internet discoveries. It’s meant to be fun and insightful at the same time.

WebTV Hebdo was born from a concept launched on my blog in march 2008. With the help of another blogger named Patrick Dion, I had a practical guide on web videos from Quebec, published each friday. The need to dedicate a complete site was born, which was done the 25th of september 2008. WebTV Hebdo was born from the efforts of Patrick Dion, Maxime Fleurant (Swoo), Patrice Spencer (Pica Communications, also designer of my blog) and myself. Like dominicarpin.ca, it’s Canoë who represents the blog with advertisers.

Since its re-broadcasting in sept 2008, Vlog isw gaining traction. The new concept received excellent reviews and allowed the show to get average audience of 800.000 viewers. Vlog’s page is also one of the most popular TVA sites

What were you looking for at iWeb Technologies, in terms of technical needs and service? What kind of product do you use now at iWeb?

At Canoë, I never thought about my site’s hosting. I was writing, and a team was in charge of the blog’s maintenance. I was thus looking for a reliable company whose reputation was rock-solid. All my searches lead me to iWeb. Sylvain Leclair did even himself the domain transfer and took the time to make me visit the company’s data centers. Overall, a professional and personalized service. I have never regreted this choice

How was your experience with iWeb up until now? Would you recommed iWeb to friends, colleagues or your audience?

Since its launch, my website has been running without a glitch. I have never encountered any problems and the iWeb staff always explained to me clairly when I needed it. I have already recommended iWeb to colleagues and will continue to do so.

To finish, how do you see the year 2009? You must have projects you’d like to share with us.

Now that Vlog’s future is secured on tv, we are actually starting to build the brand on the Internet. A completely new website, inspired from web2.0, is planned in 2009.

I would also like to find the time to produce my very own webtv at WebTV Hebdo this year, and sleep more than 6 hours each night!

Thanks to Dominic for the interview. We wish him all the bests for his Vlog project!