25 Best Blogs of 2009?

Time Magazine (are we still calling it a “magazine”?) has posted “Best Blogs 2009“, their second annual list of the “best blogs in the world”. A few notes before we dig in to their choices:

• It is currently mid-February. It might be a good idea to wait until December is a bit closer before making our “best of” lists.
• By various counts, there are at least 200 million blogs in the world. Either Time spent an incredible amount of time and effort on this, or…well, they didn’t. The fact that most of their choices can be found on Technorati’s list of the most popular blogs would suggest the latter.
• Though a list of 25 items could easily fit on one page, Time puts each and very entry on a separate page. This is designed to get 25 clicks and 25 page-views from every reader, inflating Time’s perceived popularity. It’s actually pretty smart, but also rather annoying to the reader.
• This is basically their version of linkbait – the method used by bloggers to get others to link to their posts (as I did above), increasing their rankings in Google. Lists are the most common form of this technique – anytime you see a blog post starting with a number (“25 best ____”, 5 Ways To ____”, “10 New ____”), you’re looking at linkbait. Including when I do it.
• Time’s post also incorporates two other well-known forms of linkbait: the “useful” post, and the “controversial” post. Casual readers will be attracted to it as a useful list, tech-savvy types will be complaining all day about it on their blogs – as I am doing now. See how it works?

As a kicker, in case they didn’t generate enough controversy, there’s a list of the 5 Most Overrated Blogs, sure to get a few more people ticked off, and generate five more page-views per reader.

Oddly enough, Gawker.com went from last year’s “best” to this year’s “most overrated”. Apparently in 2008 “Gawker’s relentlessly critical, headache-inducing cynicism” was a good thing, but in 2009 “the economic downturn and the near-collapse of Wall Street has made Gawker’s snarky worldview seem not only cruel but pointless.”

Oh, Time. The zeitgeist is getting sore from you having your finger on it.

As a service to you the reader, and because my annoyance knows no bounds, I present here Time’s lists on one page. The only value Time adds for your clicks is a screenshot of each, and a short paragraph seemingly written by someone on the way to work.

Time’s 25 Best Blogs 2009:

1. Talking Points Memo
2. The Huffington Post (down from #1 last year. Perhaps it was that little plagiarism problem.)
3. Lifehacker
4. Metafilter
5. The Daily Dish
6. Freakonomics
7. BoingBoing
8. Got2BeGreen
9. Zen Habits
10. The Conscience of a Liberal: Paul Krugman
11. Crooks and Liars
12. Generación Y
13. Mashable
14. Slashfood (“Slashfood is food for thought”…ugh. Didn’t they teach you about lazy writing in journalism school?)
15. Official Google Blog
16. synthesis (the choices are getting a bit better – this is a pretty thoughtful, interesting one)
17. bleat (a “pop culture ephemera” blog – not bad, but much like 100,000 others)
18. /Film
    
19. Seth Godin’s Blog (bleh. Self-important aphorisms daily from a self-proclaimed web guru, followed by slobbering fanboy comments. No thanks.)
    
20. Deadspin: Sports News
    
21. Dooce (riding out her micro-fame. I don’t care about your OB-GYN visit, really.)
    
22. Confessions of a Pioneer Woman (they had blogs on the frontier?)
    
23. Said the Gramophone (how did they choose one mp3 blog?)
24. Detention Slip (something about education apparently)
25. Bad Astronomy

Hey Time, what was your mission again?

Twitter Officially Goes Mainstream

It’s inescapable. For months, the blogging heads have been all abuzz with one breathless question: “Is Twitter Mainstream Yet?”

I can report to you today: the question has been definitively answered.

This morning I awoke to an email from my friend Paul, which read in part:

They had a piece on the news last night about Twitter, and having Twitter parties and I was mortified. 

 

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=6600808&rss=rss-cs-wls-video-6600808

 

Not to sound like a wet blanket but JC, give me a FN break. 

[Editor's note: I advise you to watch that video on an empty stomach.]

I wrote back:

I think this is part of the normal cycle of anything new becoming popular: the local news story about ______ parties. 

Probably because old people vaguely remember having parties themed around the fads of their day, like ”hula-hoop parties”. This gives them a frame to understand new things. 

The report follows the classic pattern: the lead anchor takes a dismissive tone, the younger reporter is in the know, and (go figure!) the wacky weatherman’s been tweeting for months!

The next phase - techie backlash - has already begun in some quarters, with blog posts complaining about Twitter being misused by all the new people, and how much better it was in the old days of…what, 2007? 

If history is any guide, I would expect this to be followed by a proliferation of spam, more system outages, more attempts at Twitter-killing apps, a Google tweet search, Twitter SEO and full-time Twitter experts, a generally agreed-upon “authority” ranking (which will then be gamed by scammers with paid fake followers), news stories about the dangers of predators on Twitter, a “get rich quick with Twitter” late-night infomercial, and an annual Twitter convention with an embarrassingly stupid name.

And in the end, especially here in the U.S., we will use Twitter not despite its 140 character limit, but because of it. We will communicate in 140-character segments because that is all we have to give.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and a new art form will develop. I hope so.

But please, keep your lunch plans to yourself.

150 Visitors a Day in 2 Weeks: the Bootstrap Method

Today is this blog’s 14th day in existence. Despite a couple of traffic-killing holidays in that period, I’m happy to report that, thanks to you, we’re now averaging 150 160 unique visitors a day, and the trend is upward. Since I’m just bootstrapping my way up, I thought I’d share what I did, what I didn’t, and what I didn’t do but should have.

What I did:

Concentrate on content. I’m writing about things that interest me, and hopefully others, not just trying to fill space. If you want to write just to get popular and make money…well, good luck. If you want to be John Chow, go for it.

Post consistently. I’m trying to stick to 5 days a day, Monday through Friday. That may become impossible, but I’ll try.

Utilize every free service available. Google Analytics is pretty much mandatory (though it could use an averaging function). Submitting to Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon – all free. StumbleUpon has given me half of my traffic the last few days.

Establish communication with like-minded bloggers. Social Change SEO is one I like a lot, as well as a few friends I’ve added to my links. I’m finding more all the time. Keep in mind, this is not a business transaction. I’d love a PR8 or PR9 linkback, but only from a site that makes sense, and certainly not by paying some scammer. 

Write link-bait. I backed into this technique when I wrote about my hatred for Twitter in my second post. I’ll be honest: at the time I was totally naive that people wrote controversial posts strictly to gain traffic. But when I saw people streaming in, I wrote a follow-up on more reasons Twitter sucks. Hey, I ain’t stupid.

Link to high-traffic blogs, when relevant. For example, the first line in my 2009 predictions post. Maybe I overdid it a little, but all of those sites received a ping that I linked to them, and some had an auto-trackback posted in their comments, which could lead a few people here. But remember, treat it like an nude scene: only do it if it’s integral to the plot.

Comment on related posts elsewhere. Let others know that you’ve posted your take on a subject, but again, only if you can add something to the conversation. Don’t be a salesperson. Apply the normal rules of human engagement.

Mention this blog on my social networks. Again, avoid salesmanship if you don’t want to be treated like one. These sites are there to let people know what you’re doing, and your blog is one of the things you’re doing.

Tweak the meta-tags. At the very least, make sure you have an accurate description. This is something I slacked on until just yesterday.

What I didn’t do:

Spam other blogs with unrelated comments.

Participate in in dicey linking schemes.

Write anything I couldn’t live with.

Connect with anyone I wouldn’t have in real life.

What I didn’t do but should have:

Ask for links. ”You don’t ask, you don’t get”. I need to get better at this. I really prefer things happen organically, but I also hate waiting. Slight conflict there.

Write a bunch of posts before launching, in order to “find my voice” first. I guess there’s nothing wrong with growing up in public, but this blog has just started to find itself in the last few days. It also would make regular posting easier if I had an archive I could pull one out of when I needed to.

Make it pay for itself. Just yesterday I reluctantly placed an ad in the sidebar, which I can’t even see myself due to ad-blocking software. Hopefully you can. I can’t ask you to click on it, as that’s against Google’s policy. But I think I can mention that I make money if you do.

Clearly, I’m still struggling with how/whether I want to make money on this. If just one of you signs up with my web host, I’ll break even. I recommend it, isn’t that good enough?

No? OK then, scroll down on the sign-up page and enter coupon code “GOTAPEX-ROX-A-LOT” for 3 months free, free domain registration, and only $6.95 a month. What else do you want?

What did I say about avoiding salesmanship?