Revolting Rankings

In his recent post, Revolting Peasant Metaphor, Sterling Camden at Chip's Quips hits a significant nail on the head of an issue I've written about a few times--over-ranking blog rankings.  Beside that, I like his ambiguous use of the word "revolting."

Is he making it a verb or an adjective?

If 50 million bloggers all want to be top-rated, then the blogosphere becomes nothing more than a humongous shouting match.  That seems to me, would be a pretty revolting development because it takes attention to the kind of rankings that are used by TV networks, and loses the power of the backyard fence conversation. In the former case, a bunch of slick people in nice suits uses every trick they can cook up to capture your eyeballs.  In the latter, two folks build trust, credibility and an enduring relationship through simple, candid conversations.

If you want to be an A-Lister, there's lots you can do.  First, enrich me by buying the book.  It's filled with rank-boosting tactics: Post often.  Be controversial.  Link to Scoble, Arrington and someone at BoingBoing.  Join every conversation at the top of the Technorati daily list. and at TechMeme.

Scoble and Arrington are the two most popular bloggers I know.  I don't really know there numbers, but I'd guess both get more than 25,000 visitors a day. They achieve this by contributing a great deal of incite and information relevant to a very large number of people.

This sounds pretty phenomenal until you realize all the people, all the people, all over the world who DON'T read either blog.  In fact, every day and Arrington probably reach increasingly smaller percentages of the total blogosphere.

But I have a hunch that's not what most people want from their blogs.  I think people just want to be heard and to start a few simple conversations like two guys chatting over their backyard fence who share  a few similar interests. For example, if Patti in Petaluma is passionate about hummingbirds and she blogs about it, she's delighted when she gets an enthusiastic comment from Bruce in Boise or Lilly in London. Maybe there's only three of them at first, but they all blog and over time there's may 30 hummingbird lovers, sharing their passion and some picture and 1st-person experiences.  They fly very low on the Technorati barometer, but who cares? These hummingbird lovers are relevant to each other. They learn and grow from each other. The blogs have allowed a very small global community to form.

If they wanted rankings, one could claim he or she had sex with a rock star or politician, maybe even toss up a video. Then they would gain rankings at about the same rate that they lose relevance to their chosen community.

This argument extends to me to business bloggers. Very few companies cater to all economic, demographic, geographic, sociographic categories of humanity. Most business cater to very small audiences and they can reach them--and be reached by them--more efficiently, more effectively and more economically through blogs than through any other choice.

Sterling's point is quite quote good.  Ratings are over-rated, or so it seems to me.

Comments

[Kami Huyse]

I agree that rankings are overrated; however, one has to have some level of rank to ever get noticed by Lilly in London, or they have to get noticed by someone of rank. Commenting is a good way to do this, I learned this right here on the red couch.

Not everyone can be in the top 100, and I am not even sure I would want to deal with the headache of 100s of e-mails, etc., but everyoine does want to be heard and engage with others. There is nothing more discouraging than putting up a post and getting the sound of crickets. We have all been there at one time, so I think you know what I mean.

[shel israel]

Kami,

If you write every day about hummingbirds, someone searching a web engine for the fluttery little things will find you--unless there's a whole mess of other hummingbird bloggers, at which time, you'd have to join the conversation.

[/pd]

It not about Rank --its about reach.. !!

When I entered into Blogosphere, I was keen in posting and tyring to make a ranking.. However, that has changed with me !!

I pick and choice where I make chatter, I reach into blogoshpere and continue conversations which having meaning to me and that community. This brings in the "intention" currency and the more you engage, the more "repuation" one gets.

thats web3.0 !! :)-

[Kami Huyse]

I hear what you are saying, but plenty of bloggers give up before they are "found." It requires an active strategy; rarely does the blog audience just show up. It is all ties together, and while top 100 (or even top 1,000) is not the goal for most, it does help to have a respectable rank to draw traffic. For one, Google will index you higher than those that have lower "rank." I don't know about you, but 28 percent of my traffic this year came from Technorati, Google, and MSN, that is a function of rank and search combined. While my rank is modest, having a little does help traffic. I think it is what Dave Sifry of Technorati called the magic middle, people with 20 to 1000 people linking to them.

http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000420.html

However, unlike others, I don't think it is hopeless at all. I think life is very good in the magic middle, and it shouldn't take an active blogger, that also interacts with other like or similar bloggers to get to that level.

What do you think?

[shel israel]

Kami,

There's nothing you are saying that I disagree with. As Michael Arrington pointed out there's a 60 % year-over-year turnover on the top 100 bloggers. But my point is that the goal of most blogs should not be to reach mass audiences, but to reach relevant audiences, and that means many bloggers can succeed with many smaller audiences.

[Sterling Camden]

Shel, thanks for the link, and more than that, thanks for reading my blog.

You make some very good points here that extend what I said nicely -- reaching right into the idea behind The Long Tail. Technorati 100 is everyone at the head of the tail. Big volume, big business, few providers. But people tend to ignore the long tail of diversity, for which there is just as much aggregated demand if you can connect providers to their markets (as Kami pointed out).

I cross-link liberally with other bloggers, few of them ranking above 2000 (your link today was my first under 1000 AFAIK, Shel). I also send lots of tags to Technorati, and my own sites cross-link themselves almost incestuously. That strategy puts me on the first page of almost any relevant query on both Google and Technorati. So people who are interested in my content can find me. Other than that, the numbers don't mean much.

[Sterling Camden]

Oh, and yes, I was intentionally ambiguous. ;)

[Richard Quick, Esq.]

I have come up with a very effective idea for boosting my Technorati ratings without compromising content. I have issued an edict to all of my employees that they need to boost my ratings or face dismissal. while the results are still out (I just posted it today), I am confident that it will be effective. That way, I can write whatever I want, which I do anyway.

Thanks for a good post. See me if you're looking for a job soon... I anticipate some openings!