A few weeks back there was a big flare-up about A-List of blogging and how A-list has become the gatekeeper to the blogging world. My favorite myth buster, Tristan Louis used logic and data from Technorati, and proved that the A-List is an ever changing thing. “Only one blog, Boing Boing, manage to hold its position steady in the last 9 months,” he writes. Amen to that.
I believe in the end quality will win, and it should. In reality, what matters the most is myA-List, people who I find interesting enough to put on my feedreader. I have added at-least 50 new feeds, and dropped another 50. Why? I seek the elusive high quality stuff. My opinion on this is pretty simple – if you matter to me, then we have a connection, and that’s worth more than a million page views.
I am friends with Andy, Aswath, Alec, Niall and scores of others and I met them all because of their blogs, and what they wrote. They are no A-Listers in a traditional sense, and yet they are my premium bloggers. To those who sweat the rankings, just keep doing what you do – I will find you. Unlike the old world, in this new world, quality is for all to see. Mr. Louis proves that.
Except nobody I know ever said “The A-list never changes forever and eternity” – indeed, I expect it to change, as bigger players take away position from the smaller players. That doesn’t refute gatekeepers, it means big players fight over the gatekeeping slots, and some lose. You’re refuting a strawman.
I suppose I could link-bait on this, but it’s not worth it 🙁
Amen Om – top 100 lists drive me crazy. They don’t help me discover the interesting bloggers on my topics, stuff i’m interested in reading. Every topic, no matter how big or niche, present or obscure, has interesting bloggers associated with it. That’s why we founded sphere and that’s what we’re passionate about, just trying to blog readers match their interests with high quality, relevant blog posts. When done right, it’s a nice marriage between well known bloggers and new emerging voices.
the A-list doesn’t matter to readers, but it does matter to publishers. If you create a media and gossip blog better than Gawker but can’t break pass into their traffic numbers, then the A-list dynamics matter to you.