Well it looks like WinExtra (aka Steven Hodson, aka codenut 
) is on some-one’s blogging radar judging from the traffic out of Robert Scoble’s post about my observation last night. In his response he raises an interesting point about what catches the eye of the A-List; and down, bloggers which was further added to in his post’s comments.
For Robert it appears that the visibility of the blogger’s name is important
One thing that’s hurting WinExtra’s ability to get people to link to it? I can’t find a name on the site for the author. I generally don’t like linking to blogs that I don’t know who authors them.
Then there is commenter Munir for whom the date is important
I also won’t link to a post that’s not dated. If I can’t find it within five seconds I’ll exclude the post no matter how valubale I think the information is.
I’ll even link to posts several days old because of the information value. But I must have the date, even if I don’t use it in my post. I need to know if I’m about to link to soemthing posted six months ago.
Well the date thing I have covered but the issue of the author’s name is one that unfortunately I thought was visible; or at least my long time nick codenut, but it appears that when I changed the theme for over Christmas the theme author neglected to include the author field as part of the theme.
That does raise a question as well – if you are a blogger who places a value on the validity of posts that have the authors name displayed do you give more value to a “real name” or is a nickname of equal value?
And on the whole what do the A-List bloggers look for for “authority” in new and growing blogs that want to move up the ranks? Sure there are those great <cough> top 10 lists that will tell you all the tricks to try but when it comes down to it, it is always the little things that can make a difference.
