More than ego-stroking the Top 500

ClickZ News: Feedster is floating a new top 500 list of blogs, ranked according to their accumulation of inbound links. Media buyers say they’re watching the list, but they disagree on its value as a consideration tool for ad placements in blogs. The “Feedster 500,” which challenges the long-standing Technorati 100 list and claims to contain “the most interesting and important blogs,” will no doubt stroke the egos of many bloggers who appear on it.

Undoubtedly there’s some truth in that last line. In my case, I’m really flattered to be in the list at number 221, now that Feedster got the right blog listed (see the comments to my post yesterday to understand that).

Yet at least one person thinks I’m a complete hypocrite after my post yesterday in which I questioned the validity of Feedster’s list because it originally included my other blog, one that hardly appears on anyone’s radar other than my own.

In an email, regular reader Joanne (I promised not to ID her more than that) gently asks, “How can you put the Top 500 logo on your blog after your post last night when you said you couldn’t trust the list at all? Why should I trust it, or you?”

Those are good questions. In my reply to Joanne, I tried to give her some answers that didn’t appear disingenuous (no doubt she’ll tell me how successful that was) without being defensive of something I don’t feel a need to defend.

My criticism was more about expressing incredulity at the blog Feedster originally included. That led to my questioning other aspects of the list. I did say in my post that if my main blog were the one to be in the list, then I might have more trust in it. That turns out to be the case, so I added the Top 500 logo to this blog earlier today.

So where does that leave Joanne’s charge of hypocrisy? Can I criticize a list, for the reasons I did, and then include a prominent image to show that I’m part of that list? And notwithstanding my own comments in my post yesterday? And the one I left in Elisa Camahort’s excellent post yesterday?

Well, I’m pretty clear about what I said yesterday and what I did today. A correction was made by Feedster which addressed my primary concern, ie, getting the correct blog listed. And I’m pleased with that, my ego’s nicely stroked – and I can still muse aloud with a clear conscience as to whether anyone other than bloggers really cares about such things.

The fact is that every time anyone comes out with a list, there’s lots of chatter in the blogosphere such as these examples about the Top 500.

But this is not really the most important point here.

For starters, ClickZ makes this good point in their article:

[…] Media buyers aren’t entirely dismissive. Several said the Feedster 500 shows promise as a guideline for their campaigns, particularly as their online marketing budgets begin to strain traditional sources of online inventory and blog advertising tools mature.

“It’s just skimming the surface,” said Nick Pahade, managing direct of Beyond Interactive. “It’s a great start to try to create some standards and some basic operating procedures around blogs as an advertising medium.”

I think this reflects a concept Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek – the company behind Blogpulse and Brandpulse – mentioned in the interview yesterday that Shel and I had with him, when he said that we’re still in a stage of Furious Innovation (Pete’s initial caps) regarding developing effective tools for searching content on blogs and then making judgments on the value of that content and the influence of the content producer, among other things.

The Feedster Top 500 is just another stage of that development. Still imperfect but another step on the journey. From ClickZ again:

[…] Most media buyers ClickZ spoke with expressed a similar tone of guarded optimism, but doubted the validity of generalized rankings for blogs. Click Here’s Pete Lerma made an appeal for more developed data. “I hope we see much more transparency in reporting, and a push for a closer examination of how we measure the popularity and reach of blogs,” he said.

And there is a great opportunity for someone – it could be Feedster, Intelliseek, or any of the search firms – who gets to market the first really trustworthy and reliable method by which people like advertisers will have greater confidence upon which to base some weighty decisions.

In the meantime, I for one will enjoy my fleeting moments in anyone’s list. (Heh! Take a look also at the Blogebrity List, middle column under ‘H’…)