Remember in high school when the kids actually worried about how many people — and which people — signed their yearbook?
We don’t know if this is a blessing or a curse, but Technorati has created a new feature that enables bloggers to aggregate their favorite blogs on a single page that can be shared. With all the silliness and hurt feelings that surround the issue of blogrolls, we’re afraid Technorati Favorites will just lead to more of the same.
Nevertheless, we’ve started our list.
So there won’t be any confusion, and to minimize hurt feelings, we’ll be very blunt about who’s on this list and why –
1. In the great majority of cases, we’ve added the blogs of people we’ve actually gotten to know over the past year. People whose blogs we read regularly, and people who regularly visit ours.
2. We won’t be doing any “link exchanges.” If you’d like, send us your URL and we’ll check out your blog. If we like it, we’ll keep an eye on it. If you like our blog, we encourage you to comment occasionally so we’ll know you’re out there.
3. If you find reading Media Orchard becomes a chore for you — a box you need to check off as part of your “blog networking” efforts — please stop. We promise you it’s not worth it. Life is too short.
If you consider us one of your favorite blogs, click on the link below to add us to your own list.
OK? OK. Now, let’s never mention this Technorati Favorites thing again.
(Via Micro Persuasion)
Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Public Relations, Blogs
So, you see the irony of “someone” who called for the death of blogrolls to pull this out of a hat?
Thought so.
Who called for the death of blogrolls?
Oh, you mean, Steve … I thought you were on my ass for a minute
I think that Technorati really stole this idea from me, when I updated my blog links last weekend. (Blogs I regularly visit, should visit more often, etc.)
Seriously, why is this needed? Isn’t it assumed that, if you have a blog on your links page or blog roll that it is a favorite?
Or, do you mean to tell me that some bloggers just post links without really knowning who they are linking to? What’s the term, “link love?”
– Mike
Mike, the way Technorati uses and cross-indexes its data, who knows what importance these lists will ultimately take on? Perhaps the number of “favorites lists” a blog is on will ultimately be factored into its authority level, etc. As it is, a new blogger might be likely to check out Steve or Jeremy’s favorites lists in determining what PR blogs to monitor. So I expect the lists to take on more importance over time. That’s why I wanted to say up front that I’m not going to play games with this.
Doesn’t this really mean that Techorati is getting in on the feed business?
Yes — the feedreader business, absolutely. For anyone who’s not sure yet: Technorati is the Google of blogging. They will control all. Invest now.
Scott,
Guess you are right (of course), on two points:
First, there must always be a way to rank things, blogs included.
Second (and more important), since blogs are just the ‘net version of word-of-mouth, the favorites of blogs one likes or of blogs that are popular does hold value for newbies and those looking for other good sources.
Mike
Scott; I have been busy this week and this new feature of Technorati slid under my radar, so thanks for the clue-in. I knew I read your blog for a reason ;-0
I think it is interesting that the favorites limits you to 50 blogs, which pretty much rules it out of being a feed reader given some people *say* they actually read 200 blogs a day. I myself don’t have that kind of time. I like that you can see the actual posts.
50 blogs is about right for me. What’s interesting is I’ve read this morning that the 50 may eventually be dynamically updated based on Technorati’s monitoring of which blogs you link to most. The possiblities are endless when you have all the data — which Technorati does.