Techmeme has come out with the Techmeme Leaderboard, which I like to think of as a celestial chart that ordinary earthlings can use to identify the shining stars of the technology blogosphere. I should point out – not that I pay attention to such things, of course – that on the very first publicly released Leaderboard, which was published yesterday by Dave Winer on his venerable blog Scripting News, Rough Type ranked Number 34. (It’s also probably worth noting that Rough Type was actually Number 1 among “real blogs,” as defined by Robert Scoble, who wrote the book on blogging). I have since fallen one slot, to 35, as Dave Winer slipped past me today on the Leaderboard on the strength of – you guessed it – his post about the Leaderboard. (The technology blogosphere is like a giant dog that is forever chasing its tail – except when it stops to lick its netherparts.) I am not at all bitter that my trajectory has already turned downward. Not bitter in the least. In fact, I have to confess to feeling a little bit swollen with pride this evening – and I don’t think it’s just the kielbasa I had for dinner.
“The technology blogosphere is like a giant dog that is forever chasing its tail – except when it stops to lick its netherparts.”
That sure beats the “navel gazing” cliche. And a very appropriate metaphor for certain A-listers …
Don’t you only care to be unique in the eye of your readers? At least you were until you started using gross images, instead of the previous, highly enjoyable, distinctively British and far more painful understatement.
I rather like the apparatus-licking comparison and healthily skeptical punditry — and that’ll keep me subscribed, not some leaderboard.
(Subbing to someone whose writing helps reinforce one’s own views? Hellyeah. Everyone else with an RSS reader does it.)
distinctively British
“Distinctively” may be the wrong adverb here. I is an American, as my president might say.
Sorry about the gross images. I will stick to painful understatement in the future.
So who’s in the netheregion?
No, it’s who are the nether regions :-).
Good thing you switched off Adsense. Lord knows what it would have served up related to “netherparts”.
yes, it was quite a bit of fun watching various sectors of the blogosphere get their knickers in a bunch over the “Leaderboard”…
Actually, it’s a lot like Digg and Reddit–it tells you something about a particular sector of the blogosphere and a particular group of people. Not much about anything beyond that, really.
Frankly, the stuff that went on about Ad Age’s Power 150, and the W list of women bloggers that came out of that was far more interesting that the Leaderboard apoplexy.
I wouldn’t worry about it – please keep on doing what you are doing which is insightful observations about tech.
As for your rivals/fellow bloggers – I’ve noticed that a lot of them do posts that are deliberately designed to get the top spots in techmeme, digg et al.
I.e. they’re headline chasing on controversial subjects or issues of the day – such as ‘Why I won’t install the lastest iPhone update/Why Apple is screwing it’s customers’ etc. etc. Bingo! you are almost guaranteed the Techmeme top spot.
Apart from that, sites like Techcrunch get to the top as Arrington et al are simply really well connected and they break news. Which is great, but they do nothing much beyond that. OK, that’s slightly unfair to Techcrunch but it’s mostly a news not a ‘views/opinion’ site.
Personally I’d rather read some top-notch analysis such as you provide rather than scoops that pretty much every site will have within hours anyhow.
So please continue doing what you do best – slightly hysterical headlines are easy, insightful analysis is not and there’s always going to be a bigger market for the hysterical, but in the end I and a lot of others I’m sure think that the analysis bit is far more valuable.