Discussion of the importance or over-importance of the A-lists
was reignited by the BlogHer conference
discussion about the lack of women listed on the blogosphere A-lists (like the Technorati 100). An A-lister backlash followed with criticism of
the a-lists from bloggers like
Tom McMahon and Jeremy Wright (who unsubscribed from all the A-list feeds).
A-lister Jeff Jarvis
says "There is no A list. There is only your list." and
"It's not about lists. It's about links." Jeff's article already has dozens of comments debating the importance of the top blogs.
Others blogs recently discussion a-list blogs include:
Paradox1x,
Napsterization, The Naked Truth, Halley's Comment and
Qumana. Blogebrity, which maintains A, B and C blogger lists,
asked "What is sucking up to the A-list?" and linked to some non-listed bloggers here and here -- even though it interrupted some important Jessica Coen and Jason Calacanis coverage.
It seems that all the debate over the A-lists just has bloggers coming up with
ways to create even more lists.
A-lister Steve Rubel says he
would take some of the A-list blogs like Scoble's, Jeff Jarvis' and Dave Winers' with him if he were trapped on a desert island that had broadband Internet access. He suggests everyone create their own top ten blog list and share it at the tag:
10blogs. Jeff Jarvis responded to being placed on yet another A-list.
Blogspotting's Stephen Baker asks blogger and tech investor Mark Cuban to create a new list with his IceRocket blog search engine. And Jason Calacanis has some ideas
about improving the Technorati list -- including extending it to 500 to show more of the long tail. He also asks where are the Feedster 500, Bloglines 500, etc. Calacanis has even offered a challenge for someone to come up with a better list:
I need this 500 list so bad that I’ll give an incentive: I’ll give $50,000 in
advertising to the first person to come up with a better 100 list based on the
feedback I’ve outline above (i.e. 500 folks, by links, based on the trailing 12 months, up and comer list, etc).
**Or** if some programmer out there wants to build this for Weblogs, Inc. I’ll
pay you $10,000 in cash for a proper list straight up.
Bloggers upset at the Technorati 100 might also want to check out the Blogpulse.com profiles.
These profiles rank blogs based on citations over the last thirty days instead of the total inbound links over a lifetime. Eventually blog search engines like Technorati will probably have category top 100 lists (or top 500 lists) as well -- allowing for more blogs to be listed. These category lists would be more interesting and valuable than the bulk Technorati 100 that compare the popularity of political blogs like DailyKos to technical blogs like Gizmodo.
