Shooting at Bubbles

We might not want to admit in public but bloggers; especially those doing it as a career, liked having a ranking system that we use to get with Technorati. I say use to because whether they might not want to admit it or not Technorati isn’t really relevant anymore. Still though we flash that Technorati chicklet in our sidebars like it does mean something.

The thing is that between the service being severely gamed into uselessness the whole new media arena, of which blogs are only a part of now, has changed dramatically. Links, the very commodity by which we figured out our worth within the blogosphere have changed. They have grown beyond the blogs and into metric powerhouses on other new media services.

Louis Gray talked about this in a post today

Not too long ago, one of the most common items to see featured on a blog was one’s Technorati Authority, showing the number of unique blogs that linked back to you in the previous six months. Looking back at some of my "State of the Blog" entries I used to post monthly, I can see that approximately one year ago, that number stood at nearly 1,000. (See: here) Now, that same measure is only slightly above 500, a decrease of nearly half, despite my posting schedule being fairly regular, and the site’s visibility rising over the same period.

Discussion of Technorati Authority used to be a big topic on this blog as recently as 2007. (See: Why My Technorati Ranking Is Slip-Sliding Away, Technorati Needs to Stamp Out Viral Tag Spam Now, Is Technorati Going After Spam Blogs?, and My Technorati Link Stats Make No Sense) But now, not only is Technorati largely overlooked, but so is linking, for the most part. It’s easier to send a link via Twitter, or to share a post on Google Reader or FriendFeed.

Even here at Shooting at Bubbles when I did the whole rebranding project I decided not to even worry about adding the new blog to my Technorati profile but I did make sure that I installed the Tweetmeme plugin for Wordpress.

However this change in the linking economics of new, or social media has created a vacuum for a way for bloggers to gauge their popularity – and in some cases worth. Yes this might seem slightly narcissistic but it is a part of human nature to want to know where you stand in the pack and ranking gave us that standing.

But as Louis noted – the basis by which we calculated that standing has gone beyond just our blogs and trackbacks. We have Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook all now adding to the link economy that starts with our blogs but we have no way to gather all those numbers together.

Like Louis I’m not big on ReTweeting and have written why not more than a few times here but unfortunately like Technorati it also is a metric of popularity. A metric that while useful within limits is a metric standing out there by itself.

What would be nice to see is an amalgamation of the ideas behind Technorati, Tweetmeme, with some way to include the link counts from Friendfeed and Facebook (good luck on that one) all combined together. Tie that is with some really serious work on anti-gaming and anti-spamming (for a change) and I think bloggers could actually have a ranking system that means something.

Unlike what we have right now anyway.