Owen has alerted me to Ecosystem, which is basically a mini-Google for blogs. Basically, Ecosystem collects and indexes various blogs; it then computes a sort of mini-PageRank based on which blogs link to which other blogs. It then assigns your blog an evolution rating, from "higher being" to "flippery fish" to "microbe". So far, this isn't a bad system -- it may not be as precise as PageRank, but it's more specialized, so the information has more relevance. Unfortunately, Ecosystem's parent site also supports the New Blog Showcase -- basically a political system worthy of any banana republic.
The idea is that a blogger can vote for another blogger by linking to one of his posts. The blogger with the highest number of votes wins... Actually, I don't know what they win, maybe a year's supply of soap or something. The bottom line is that the system completely invalidates the actual content of a blog -- all that matters is how many friends the blogger has. This kind of system works well for junta dictators and U.S. politicians, but for bloggers it's just useless. Nonetheless, I did vote for Owen by linking to his post; his Mayor Quimby-esque beg-a-thon was just too good to go unrewarded. Besides, his posting is at least semi-original (in that rabid, Rush Limbaugh kind of way), which is more than I can say for most other blogs out there.
Posted by metabug at 2003/08/31 00:27 | TrackBack (2) | Categories: