Feedster have updated their Top 500 Blogs page and have added tags into the mix. So now blogs have tags next to them which makes it a much more useful list. So now the problogger entry looks like this:
If you click on the ‘blogging’ tag you get taken to a list of the top blogs with that tag. This new feature responds to the call of many who critiqued the last update of the list (August) saying a more useful list would be one with categories of some kind.
Also new is the drop down list that you get giving you options to subscribe to the feeds of these blogs via different services when you put your cursor over the XML button.
Now all I need to do is work out how to add my photo to it. I’ve tried to add my picture about 15 times now and don’t seem to be getting anywhere.
update: Scott – the guy who puts the top 500 together – has written about the new features and thinking behind the changes here
Wow, I’m on the list for the first time at #457. Now, I guess I’d better figure out where they got those tags from, and add a few new ones.
Darren-
Congrats on making it again! We have put a link on the right hand side of the top 500 page that says, “click here to add your own icon” Give it a try, Scott has really flushed a lot of the problems out of the icon system, so it should work. If that still doesn’t work, you can email your pic to jgross AT feedster dot com and I will do it for you. We really want to get everyone in the top 500 to have their own icon.
Thanks for the feedback.
James
Hi Darren,
I’m sorry for the problems you’ve had and, seeing this entry, I took the liberty of uploading the picture from your blog for you. Hope this helps.
Best
Scott
At first glance, the upper echelon of the list contained no surprises, all very well known blogs, all somewhat skewed to an internet-savvy urban audience.
When I thought a bit more about it, I started to think about my own feed. I get what I think is fairly reasonable traffic to my site – Sitemeter tells me we’ve had nearly 600k visits this month – but the RSS feed has never taken off – I have about 250 subscribers.
Gridskipper, on the other hand, is #11 on feedsters’s list – great positioning. Yet take a look at gridskipper’s traffic figures:
http://www.nickdenton.org/002013.html
Unless I’m reading that wrong, Gridskipper is averaging only about 5-6k visits a day. Which would suggest their RSS feed is MUCH more popular than the site itself. If anything, this has to show that the monetization of RSS feeds is going to become a top priority.
I was under the impression that the top 500 list was ranked more-or-less by inbound links.
Yes, I think it is, but I assumed there was at least some kind of correlation between that and traffic.
I also made it onto the list for the first time. I’m a little surprised to see that it’s only sent one or two visitors my way so far.