As if there wasn't enough news about blogs and RSS these days (and really, is there *ever* enough news about blogs and RSS?) Feedster today announced their list of of the Top 'Interesting and Important' blogs.
And while it's fantastic to have this information regarding which blogs are the most popular and influential...we found it interesting that tech-company Feedster compiled such a subjective list. From their press release:
The ranking is achieved by taking into account factors such as the number of inbound links over time; if the blog has been recently updated; and the elimination of obvious non-blogs that have appeared on other top-blog lists.
“Feedster’s ranking shows the diversity of content and opinion that make up the user-created blog world and move away from rankings based largely on who’s been around the longest. The list seeks to go far beyond techies and far beyond the A-list bloggers and far beyond text,” says FEEDSTER Top 500 creator J. Scott Johnson, who is also a co-founder and CTO of Feedster.
“We left out professional news sites, aggregation systems, and some fairly static web sites that happened to have feeds but don’t ‘feel bloggy,’” says Mr. Johnson. “This sort of filtering is a different screen than what we use to categorize news versus blogs in Feedster search and is much more subjective. Our first iteration of this list solves the staleness problems and not-a-blog problems that others have faced.”
Seriously...I think it's really funny that Feedster would base inclusion in their Top 500 upon whether or not something "feels bloggy." It's very fluffy criteria, no? So...if a blog includes primarily links to news sources instead of a daily philosphical rant, does it necessarily feel *less* bloggy? Who makes that call? I'd like to learn more about their methodology, but they haven't provided any additional information.
I like the definition provided by the A VC blog:
Blogging is not limited to posting a short blast of text into Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, or Live Journal.
Blogging is way bigger than that.
Podcasting is blogging.
Posting photos to flickr is blogging.
Building a link roll on del.icio.us is blogging.
Posting your cell phone videos of your cat on vimeo is blogging.
Building your personal page on MySpace.com is blogging.
Anytime a user posts their content on the web in a place they control for the world to consume, they are blogging...
...Every time I talk to a person involved in “traditional media” who wants to understand the Internet, I tell them one thing – user generated content.
Until you get user generated content, you don’t get the Internet.
And blogging is the platform for user generated content.
I'd go one beyond that. If you're posting an article that you feel is newsworthy - something you're sure your readers will be interested in - that's *still* blogging. If there's a fantastic article on RSS adoption in the New York Times, I'm going to post a link and perhaps a blurb in the blog. Whether or not I add additional commentary, it's still a blog post.
The definition of blogging is growing every day. And while Feedster recognizes this and vows to adapt their definition of a blog as needed, I'm not sure I agree with what they've done. Exclude the keyword stuffers and link farms, for sure. But let the blogosphere evolve as it will, without any limits.
You can view the Top 500 here. Interesting to note how many of them are industry blogs!
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