a case study in the illusions of blogging

yesterday i did some minor maintenance on my technorati account. i logged in to change a couple of tags around to better fit the site’s content as it has shaped up in the last year. we do evolve after all. while there i couldn’t resist the urge to click each tag and see where i stood in the technoratic scheme of things. the results were kind of funny and got me thinking, yet again, about the realities of blogging as compared to the number-driven illusions and mutually reinforcing delusions. consider the following a sort of case study in the illusions of blogging.

so- technorati, the popular ranking / tracking / tagging service which many of us bloggers look to for some insight into our place in the blogoshpere, allows each blog 20 overarching tags with which to sum up general slant and content. each of those 20 tags can be used to search out similar content and serves to place each blog in thematic relation to all the millions of others. the following rankings are by tags which i’ve chosen to sum up the nonist and were taken from technorati yesterday-

first lets get a chunk of the data out of the way in one swoop. for each of the following headings the nonist is ranked as the #1 result:

fiction

humanism

ideas

observations

skeptic

belief

i must say that i find this fairly disconcerting. this means that overall the nonist is the top ranking blog for over a quarter of the 20 tags i’ve chosen to reflect it. if you look closely at the tags you’ll see that most are fairly broad, but i have to ask myself is the nonist really an appropriate choice to represent fiction, humanism, or skepticism in technorati’s cosmos? i try to write a bit of fiction each week, i believe whole heartedly in humanism, and am rather skeptical in general, but i have to believe there are sites with a more focussed viewpoint which people searching for said subjects deserve to see first.

the following results perhaps illustrate this more clearly:

philosophy:

1. tcs daily

2. the nonist

history:

1. Informed Comment

2. urban legends about.com

3. the nonist

books:

1. blogcritics.org

2. pop matters

3. neil gaiman

4. professor brainbridge

5. the nonist

well… certainly i’m interested in looking at most of my chosen content in a philosophical way, i post many items of historical interest i suppose, and i refer to, quote from, and scan books often, but in all these cases the inclusion of the nonist seems somewhat misleading no?

here’s another good example-

arts:

1. the new york review of books

2. the nonist

3. bldgblog

now take that in for a moment. the nonist ranks just below the n.y review of books, which makes sense, but above bldgblog which seems wrong. i can go for days without mentioning the arts at all where as bldgblog is well focussed. the pattern of illusion begins to be evident.

now look at these-

design:

1. kottke.org

12. the nonist

17. design observer

writing:

3. neil gaiman

6. the nonist

16. words for my enjoyment

25. double tongued word wrester

29. if:book

and

science:

1. pharyngula

2. tcs daily

3. the nonist

4. science Blog

5. the panda’s thumb

in the design category i think it’s important to note where design observer falls. to my mind design observer is the most sophisticated and enjoyable site out there focussed on design. it’s arguable whether kottke is actually strongly focussed on design and i can say for sure that the nonist, though design “interested,” is by no measure a blog “about” design. (i do that evil shit all day and would rather not dwell on it.)

in the writing category you’ll notice the crazy cross-section which all sit under it’s umbrella. gaiman who is a world renown author, double tongued word wrester which is a wonderful etymological site, if:book which is broadly focussed on the culture of books, and those other two. now the nonist is at 6 and words for my enjoyment is 16 even though pauly offers a new piece of creative writing every single day without fail (he’s a professional writer after all) and has a very lively readership which masses 25-35 comments regularly on every post. meanwhile the posts here which i would characterize as “writing proper” are consistently the least commented upon. this tells me our readers do not necessarily come here for writing.

in the science category i can’t help but just laugh. pharyngula, science blog, and panda’s thumb, must cringe whenever they see this site’s inclusion among them. they are admirable, serious, sites with a proper science pedigree, where as i manipulate photo’s of darwin, prattle on about space, and post the blurbs i find of interest in the sidebar. how can i be wedged there between them?!

i’ll let you all in on a little secret now which goes a long way toward explaining things-

the nonist is highly ranked on the strength of no more than 3 or 4 extremely popular posts. sure we have a home in many sidebars but not nearly as many as the numbers would seem to reveal. the “nonist public service pamphlet” on blog depression has been, without question, the single biggest key to the sites wider dissemination. but how many of those linking the pamphlet, or following links, have been return visitors? meanwhile our referrer logs continue, months and months on, to show a high concentration of links pointing toward “the erotic coloring book” and “making love in 1975.” of all the nuggets unearthed and all the original content crafted the fact that these two silly posts continue to draw such a large share of attention, owing entirely to their quasi-sexual content, is, if i’m being honest, disheartening.

in essence this begs the question, how many of the 1,739 links pointing to the nonist represent an actual readership? also, does a blog with a handful of popular posts deserve to rank so high? and finally, is this method of putting blogs in perspective even remotely accurate in representing the actual blog landscape? to that last question i’d have to answer no. at least not from my perspective.

take a look at the ranking for the following tag-

eclectic:

1. boing boing

2. the nonist

in my mind “eclectic” might be the single most accurate tag i use in my technorati account to sum up the nonist, it is nothing if not eclectic, so a ranking of number two on that tag is actually fairly gratifying. searching “eclectic” and being given this result might lead one to draw corollaries however- “ah boing boing is huge, the “nonist” must be comparable somehow…”

but now take a look at those over all linking numbers-

1. boing boing. over all - 67,731 links from 19,764 sites

2. the nonist. over all - 1,739 links from 895 sites

not exactly comparable are they? in truth boing boing is the blogoshpere’s version of a superpower where as the nonist is akin to a small pacific island whose indigenous peoples still wear loincloths and have never seen a porsche, which is to say almost totally unknown. or let me put it into more topical terms- if boing boing were to start a preemptive war against another blog, at best the nonist might be listed among the “coalition of the willing,” not because we have an army, but because we donated a single bomb-sniffing mollusk to the effort.

now you might be thinking that i’m being unfairly (or even insincerely) self-deprecating with all this, but really i’m just trying to illustrate a point. if services like technorati (each blogger has his favored service) are not in fact representative of the landscape and the numbers themselves don’t really signify much concretely, then what is the purpose? or more specifically, why do bloggers watch over the rankings and numbers and referrer logs so closely?

when the nonist was at it’s ranking peak, somewhere around 400 overall on technorati, things were no different than they are today, when we have dropped down to around 800 (and still falling). the experience from my point of view was (with the exception of a few months worth of higher hosting bills) the same. this precipitous rise and subsequent fall did not effect the site in any palpable way. so why then do i continue to look at the numbers? why do i still check technorati each morning and my referrer logs a couple times each day? simple- because the illusion of accomplishment which the numbers provide is the only reflection of success or failure available to me.

i have no advertising on the site, so i can not gauge popularity or achievement by my ad-sense revenue. i do not offer a specific product or service, the sale and popularity of which i could look to as a reflection of my efforts. i have not as of yet tried to parlay the site’s (possible) popularity into any other opportunities. in short i do not have at my disposal any of the traditional measuring sticks with which to gauge accomplishment.

where as the creators of sites which, directly or indirectly, take in profits can look to them as a marker, i am obliged to look at traffic like a store owner who does not actually sell anything so instead reviews the security camera footage from above the front door a few times a day to be sure someone showed up. services like technorati offer bloggers like me (of which there are millions) a point of reference, illusory though it may ultimately be.

these are not complaints, merely observations. i could after all load up the site with ads. that’s my prerogative. but i’ve chosen not to. which brings me back to points i’ve touched on many times already, both satirically and sincerely.

why do we blog?

what do we hope to accomplish?

how will we know when we’ve succeeded?

i’m willing to bet that the lion’s share of those blogging right now have no idea why they blog. having started out of curiosity they are now simply compelled. if asked they might answer “because it’s fun!” though i’d have to retort that if the popularity of the “blog depression pamphlet” proved anything it’s that blogging is not always fun. it’s work. so again i ask, why do we blog?

the highly successful “superpowers” of blogging likely don’t ask the question anymore. there’s no need. they probably don’t bother to check their stats and referrers nearly as often either. (can you imagine cory or mark over of boing boing waking up each morning and logging on to technorati to see if anyone has linked them? haha. i can’t.) they have concrete evidence of their success which make the illusory popularity contest of technorati and similar services superfluous. perhaps for the “non-profits” that is the ultimate badge of success- disinterest in rank.

for the rest of us though the illusion is all we have by way of external reward. for me personally comments, emails, involvement, and conversation of any kind is the highest reward, but failing those at least i can see when someone in poland thought enough of a post to link it. that’s gratifying as well. the act of compulsively looking to technorati proves i’m not quite a success. on the other hand the numbers there seem to imply that neither is this enterprise unsuccessful. of course i’m a realist, and the crazy tag rankings above which place us in with pharyngula, kottke, neil gaiman, the panda’s thumb, the n.y review of books, and boing boing, actually diminish my pleasure a bit because i know that, appearances aside, we are not at that level of popularity. we are in fact a small blog with a modest readership which can use all the help it can get. which is to say those monoliths listed are not our peers, gratifying though the illusion may be.

lastly let me just leave you with this bit of tagging zen, take from it what you will-

as of yesterday technorati offered the following rankings:

truth

1. the brad blog

2. the nonist

lies

1. the nonist