9rules is an online community of blogs and bloggers. In 2006 it took the award for Best Community Site of the Year at SXSWi in Austin, Texas.

9rules is currently made up of over 30 communities divided by topics such as Gaming, Apple, Web Design and Web 2.0. Each member is hand-picked out of thousands that apply to join, their blogs evaluated over an extended period of time with regards to quality. In 2006 it is estimated to have had more than 200 members.

Membership process

From 2003-2006 applications were handled in submission rounds, occurring roughly twice a year and giving applicants a 24-hour window to submit their blog. Each member was evaluated and hand-picked by the site staff based on quality of applicants' blogs. The fifth membership round attracted 1,190 new submissions. In 2007 a new application round started but was not limited by the previous 24-hour time limit. 9rules remained open for submissions until April 17th, 2007 when the round was officially closed with a public announcement.

Site history

Ali

On February 8th, 2007, 9rules launched a new version of its site code-named Ali.

Ali2

On October 9th 2007, 9rules launched a new version of its site code-named Ali2 which introduced several new features to their public member forums. This included a visual redesign, social bookmarking system and improved capabilities for user profiles to showcase feeds from external sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us and Twitter.