Feedster has come up with a Top 500 blogs list arranged by incoming links in response to Jason’s call for such a list.
I’m not a big believer in lists and rankings of blogs except that they give some indication of what is happening in the blogosphere. To me it’s less about which blog is best but more about trends that might be observable both in the list at any point in time but also what happens to the list over time.
Not sure if that makes much sense, it’s been a long day, but I’m interested in what people notice about the list? See any themes or trends? See any blogs or types of blogs missing?
One last note on the list – the press release announcing it says its a list of the ‘most interesting and important blogs in the US’.
In addition to this being a pretty arrogant statement (as if anyone could say the most interesting and important blog could be contained in any list of 500 blogs – the fact is that quite a few blogs in the list are not US blogs – I can see a few, including this ProBlogger.
Maybe it’s time that there was a press release that blogs outside of the US exist and can be important and interesting too. Anyway – interested in others thoughts and if I have anything more sensible to say tomorrow after a good night’s sleep I’ll update this post.
Update: Yep – I did notice that they’ve included my comments RSS feed in the list – go figure! Weird.
Update II – I’ve just spoken to a Feedster person – Scott Johnson – the one who authored the code behind the list- and he said that the press release was poorly worded and should not have mentioned ‘US Blogs’ but rather is a measure of ‘blogs written in English’.
Update III – Buzz Machine isn’t too impressed by the list:
‘Making a universal top n00 list, however it is made, continues to engage in old-media thing, big-media, mass-market think: The guys on top win.
No, in this new world of choice and control at the edges, it’s the niches, and those who can pull them together, who win. And it’s those who can demonstrate influence and engagement who will win — as soon as somebody figures out how to demonstrate it.’
What… interesting stuff outside the US?
No… surely not.
:-p
How can they tell if a blog is produced outside the US? Apart from obvious ones, most blogs would need a careful reading over time to determine their origin, especially if the blogger doesn’t pin their bio at the top. Surely the really interesting thing about blogs is that they can come from anywhere. This morning I found a Malaysian blog which was writing about one of my posts. The English was impeccable, and the comments too were pretty good. I would never have pinned “Malaysian” on it had not the blogger mentioned it.
I agree…a blog is not necessarily more important because it has more incoming links.
Spammers are going to love that list. Especially the ones who comment spam. The top 500 blogs to put their comment spam. Way to go guys, as if we did not have to read enough of that crap already.
Of course this predicated on the fact that the blogs on that list have comments open.
I don’t think the list will make much difference to spammers. Most use automated tools searching for sites most likely to have open, unprotected comment gateways. The large blogs who keep comments on probably already have fairly good spam prevention systems in place.
After reading Andy Merrett comment. I retract my earlier comment. I totally agree with what Andy said.
I think that the top “insert-number-here” lists are pointless in that they can be easily duped. Imagine I make a blog, and I get 20 of my friends to vote for me every day. Does that mean, because my blog gets 20 votes a day and 20+ visits a day that it’s popular? No, it just means I know how to persuade people to vote for me.
Having said that though, inadvertant “voting” via plugins, such as blogsoftheday.com has, can be a better weathervane for popularity and import. What about “trend” lists, such as blogpulse? Your rating/ranking depends on how often you post, and how often your entries are cited by others. That seems to me to be a better system than an overall top 50 or top 100 etc.,
But, still makes me wonder why these Top 50/100 lists are popular and used…
Yup, it’s all about links. Never mind the quality, feel the links… :D
English Guy – you’re right – only difference with this one is that its not based on votes, its based on a number of factors including how many other sites link to you which might be manipulatable on a small scale but harder to do so at the top end where they have tens of thousands of links.