Just like with Hollywood celebrities, the blogosphere has its A-list. Celebrity in Hollywood might be measured based upon number of magazine covers one receives, while in the blogosphere it comes down to links. A common side effect of blogging is the development of an obsession to look at our site meters and Technorati rankings to see where we fall. While there are clear limitations to any method of ranking blogs, most bloggers, or at least those of us who do it regularly, want the positive reinforcement that someone is paying attention to what we write.
This week Liberal Values passed a land mark despite the attempts of a fanatic fringe in the blogosphere to slander and boycott me and the blog. Earlier in the week Liberal Values achieved a Technorati ranking of 500, reaching 504 as of today. This has often been used as a defining characteristic of being an A-list blogger. Last November Kineda described the A-list bogs:
The Very High Authority Group [A-List Bloggers]
(500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)
In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we’ve grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.
Technorati rankings are based upon the number of other blogs which link to your blog in the past six months. I waited a few days to comment on this as Technorati rankings are a bit like playing Chutes and Ladders. Often we have a post which receives a lot of attention and many link to it, helping our ranking shoot up. Over the next six months, some of those who linked to such a post will link to us again, but others won’t. Sometimes we see a drop six months later, and it is certainly possible Liberal Values will fall below 500 again.
Liberal Values shares some of the characteristics listed above, while not others. We achieved this ranking more rapidly than the average year and a half, but that is partially due to brining in hundreds of daily readers after having had blogged elsewhere. I do blog more than twice a day, but this varies between new writings and posts which are largely quotes from other sources with brief comments. While some blogs are “full-fledge professional enterprises,” I have my own non-blog professional enterprise to run which limits my time and necessitates the use of posts which are partially quotes and links. I’ve never felt too bad about that as sites from Drudge Report to Atrios rely even more than I do in linking to others.
Another change of consequence is that, while back in November there were over 4000 blogs in this category, now there are over 6000. Back when I started Liberal Values last August Technorati was ranking less than two million blogs. Now they rank about eight million. WIth more blogs around, it is easier to accumulate links and perhaps the threshold for an A-list blogger should now be higher than 500.
Another question is the nature of the links. Many liberal or conservative blogs gain links primarily from other similar blogs, requiring a greater percentage of links from the larger liberal or conservative blogs to reach 500. Liberal Values doesn’t completely fit the mold of liberal blogs. Many of our links come from science bloggers, libertarians, science fiction fans, and others who do not typically link to the larger liberal blogs. On the one hand, this means that our links often come from smaller blogs than the typical large liberal blog. On the other hand it means a greater depth of readership than those who primarily read liberal blogs. While the links here often do come from smaller blogs, there are still plenty of large liberal blogs linking here. Sites such as Memeorandum and Megite consider “quality links” as opposed to number of links and link to Liberal Values on a regular basis.
All in all, breaking a Technorati ranking of 500 means less than it did a year ago, and making the A-list isn’t as hard, but this still isn’t a bad accomplishment for a blog that is less than a year old.
Congratulations Ron, you sure earned it.