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Favor Me And I’ll Favor You?
By admin | April 19, 2007
No thanks. I have seen a lot of people in the last few days, randomly favoring other people’s blogs in technorati just for the sake of getting favored back.
What’s the use of this? All that will be accomplished is that truly interesting blogs that were favored in an “honest” way get snowed under by blogs that take their place by means of fabricated and manipulated data.
Please favor my blog only and only if you really think it’s worth it. Not just for the sake of it because I won’t return the “favor” unless I like your blog.
Heck, I’m not even going to make it easy for you to add me as a favorite. No one-click-link to add me to your favorites. 
Bloginflation sucks.
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Topics: people, technorati, blog |
April 19th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Bob,
Your little rant reminds me of Michael Arrington’s diatribe against Payperpost.. especially the part about blogosphere pollution.
Who is to determine what is interesting? To assert that the Top 100 is reserved for blogs that are somehow inherently of greater value is an assumption that is ungrounded. Popularity in the Top 100 is heavily niche-based; blogs in certain fields enjoy a wider audience but that doesn’t mean that excellent blogs in smaller fields don’t deserve to be in the Top 100.
I don’t even want to point out the fact that there are more than a handful of blogs who got into the Top 100 before this experiment, due to tech fave exchanges or contests. They weren’t favorited because they were great, they just got in by similar methods.
I find it particularly unnerving that you consider some of the blogs participating in the exchange (including Dosh Dosh) to be ‘fake or meaningless’ blogs.
If you’ve took the time to read some of the blogs participating in the exchange, you would know that there is nothing fake or meaningless about them. I certainly believe that Dosh Dosh and several other blogs, deserve to be up in the Top 100 and I’m not going to mince my words about it.
To say to these bloggers that they should hush up and stay in their place is a little elitist, in my opinion. This is just an experiment and its very unlikely that the Top 100 will be swamped by ‘undeserving’ blogs. If you’re not interested in it, don’t participate. Why the need to attack other bloggers?
Most of the bloggers participating are small bloggers who are currently enjoying the fresh deluge of visitors who swarm their blog looking for fave exchanges. Short-term traffic for sure, but this gives them a lot of exposure and might make them new readers.
I’m impressed by the generosity and interaction of most of the participants as well. There are no hard or fast rules to the exchange but many of them have been freely linking to other blogs who are holding exchanges, thus giving them exposure even though they might be competitors in getting into the Top 100.
In truth, staying in Top 100 for the long run will ultimately depend on the blog’s popularity with its audience. The exchange won’t run forever and eventually will die out.
At that point, natural favoriting will take over and each blog’s popularity with their audience will be the primary factor in determining if they stay in the Top 100 or not.
I respect your opinion and just wanted to offer my own perspective on it.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Excellent post and very true! I think once you get past the top 10 in any ranking scheme on the internet (google search, technorati) you start to find the rest of the list is just those who have figured out how to work the system to their advantage.
You could find this post getting you a lot of favorites!
Kumiko
April 19th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Maki, I might have worded it wrong, I did not mean to say that the blogs are fake or meaningless, its the fabricated value given to them by manipulation which is fake and meaningless.
I will edit my text as I see it can be interpeted wrong. English isn’t my native language so I do get misunderstood every now and then
The defention of the word favorite is by my understanding something you really like and thus you prefer this above something else. If you “favor” something to get favored in return it defies the whole point doesnt it?
Sadly I get the feeling that you are taking this a little personal which you shouldn’t as I am not attacking anyone. Merely speaking my mind and I actually read your blog from time to time.
Oh, and is it my imagination or did you actually un-favor me after reading this comment?
April 19th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Thanks Kumiko, did you add me?
April 19th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Thanks for your explanation, Bob.. and I understand your point better now.. sorry if I ranted too much but I think I took it pretty well.. how would you feel if someone said your blog was fake and meaningless?
To be honest, a lot of the Top 100 favorites are made up of blogs who have manipulated the system. Why so? Because they can’t manipulate linkcounts as effectively as favorites. It’ll be a little naive to think that they are ‘truly interesting’. They just got in earlier, that’s all.
I’m pretty sure Technorati is aware of this and has not made any changes in their TOS to reflect this, which probably shows the low value they place in the favorite ranking system.
I see your point about the definition of ‘favorites’ but I’m not going to go into semantics because we are not purely talking language or concept.
We are talking about tangible rankings based on specific actions which could be called something else, not just ‘favorites’. It could be called Technorati Bookmarks (which is actually a more accurate description) and the situation will still be the same.
But enough of this.. I understand/appreciate your perspective and I’m not going to try to convert you to mine. Thanks for reading Dosh Dosh btw.
April 19th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Bob, I didn’t unfavorite you. I don’t do stuff like that.
April 20th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
[…] seems to be steaming full power towards world domination and it looks like I got onboard without a valid ticket Somehow this amuses me but I would like to know which of the people that faved me actually read my […]
July 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Just added you like favorite, add me too:
http://technorati.com/faves/?add=http://techgadgetblog.blogspot.com
My blog name: Tech Gadget Blog
My Blog Url: http://techgadgetblog.blogspot.com/
The best!