Lists? We've Got Lists!
posted on 2005-08-15 at 23:57:06 by Joel Ross
Some of the biggest buzz going around the blogosphere these days has to do with lists. Specifically, the Technorati 100, and what's wrong with it.
Jason Calacanis even went as far as to offer a reward for the first person (or company) to create a Top 500 list that's accurate. That's fine for those who aren't blog readers, or just looking for something interesting to read, but for me, a top 500 list means nothing to me.
Jeremy Zawodny has a post that hints at the real solution titled "Finding needles in the growing Blog Haystack?" where he asks how does someone find what's interesting to them. He says the burden is on the reader and the publisher right now, which is true, but it doesn't have to be true.
All of the major players in the aggregation game have the chance to solve this, and I know how! Arrogant, huh? So what's the solution? Well, if you have my OPML (list of subscribed blogs), then why can't you compile information about who they're linking to, and if 50 of them are to the same place, and they aren't on my list, then that seems like a pretty good candidate for my list. So, what am I saying? Everyone's top 500 is different, and no one list will ever be correct. It has to be different for everyone. Now, most people won't have enough subscriptions to get a top 500, but you could either limit to what you have (above a certain threshold), or expand the top 500 to "friends of friends" - blogs linked by blogs linked by blogs you subscribe to.
Now, if you add some statistics about how much time you spend reading each blog, and then weight the results based on that, wouldn't that be attention?
Categories: Blogging