Many of you will have noticed that I've referenced Technorati and their blog ranking system in the last few posts. For those non-geeks, Technorati (Technorati is a portmanteau of the words technology and literati, which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism.) is the arguable leader in blog search engines and provides a service that rates and ranks individual blogs based on influence in the blogosphere. "OMG! What does that mean?", the non-geeks wail! What that means is that Technorati tracks, not how many hits your blog gets, but rather how many other independent blogs have linked to your posts - and then they give you a ranking for that influence in the medium. Now over the years, Technorati has been widely criticized for how they calculated the rankings and it was, of course, people with crappy rankings who did most of the complaining. In 2006, someone pointed out that Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" postings, which then claimed to track 27.7 million blogs, did not take into account MySpace blogs, of which there were said to be 56 million. As a result, it was claimed said that the utility of Technorati as a gauge of blog popularity was questionable. However by March of that same year Technorati had started tracking MySpace blogs. Last year Technorati claimed to be tracking over 120 million blogs worldwide. 
And then it all hit a wall. With the popularity of blogs rising and magazines and newspapers shuttering by the thousands it became imperative that a clearer tracking and monitoring of the blogoshere was needed. So Technorati pulled the plug on their old rating system and started from scratch. They also redesigned their site and killed a few features that made bloggers less happy, but all-in-all the new ranking system seems to be a success by both tech professional and average user standards. Andy Beard of Internet Business Systems authors the previous two click-throughs. But enough of all this tecno-babble. I wanna know about me! 
And so we go. Just to give you an idea of where WWED stood in February of this year take a look at my 2009 Annual Report post, which is really a recap of 2008. At that point Technorati had us placed at 520,00 in a universe of 120 million or so blogs but with the new system, initiated in the fall, we debuted at 53,000 and have now climbed to 45,120 - but keep in mind they have cleaned out their definition of the blog universe pretty well and eliminated the scam/advertising blogs that weren't updated or written by real people - so we're not sure how many blogs are in their total universe now. All we know is that they only track the real ones. Technorati now rates blogs on a tally of monthly metrics that are confusing as hell to us mere mortals but based on post frequency, other blogs linking in and some other closely guarded hocus pocus - but what the hell, we're moving up. And that's got to be a good thing.To give you an idea of where that puts us in the total universe, lets look at a few benchmarks: Ranked as number one for as long as anyone could say the word blog is the Huffington Post with an Authority of 964 out of a total 1000. Coming in a lot lower but still with over a million hits a month is Hugh MacLeod's Gapingvoid at an Authority of 579 to place at 1925 - and he just published a best-selling book. So with WWED clocking in at an Authority of 118 and ranking 45,120 I feel about as good as I should, considering that I haven't published a farking thing, except the blog. So something is happening, but I'm not sure exactly what. All I know is that when I show my dad a report card with a better grade than last time, he gives me money!
The photos here are all from the public library here in Munich, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and an exhibit they had on Gutenberg and his application of the printing press. As we now stand on the precipice of an entirely new information distribution system, the Internet, I can't help but wonder what Gutenberg would have thought of it and what his handle on Twitter might have been or blog might have looked like...
For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:
Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?
If Gutenberg had a blog he's use Movable Type.
ReplyDelete--Sorry I couldn't resist.
Yeah right. But the Korean monks invented printing with the 'tripticata' and replicating entire pages by wood carving of them. Let's give Gutenberg the ability of mechanical editing. A curse on all writers.
ReplyDelete