O, the Providence of the world is a vast housekeeping, a grandiose painting.
***Kierkegaard
NJ Bear is one of the most durable and impressive presences of the Web. My imagination is not creative enough to guess how the TTLB ecosystem is organized. I went through a brief period when I had his little icon in the sidebar and every time I opened the home page I had to see I was something icky, like a slimy something or other...
I dropped out because I didn't like the image. Well, also because I couldn't seem to climb the phylogenetic tree no matter what I did. Time passed. Then one day I checked out my status and Lo! I was up to the Fish, or something. Wow! Not bad. Only some ten thousand or so sites between me and the big shots.
Recently the TTLB has been undergoing some structural changes. Or as the message says, "going a bit wonky" as it is being worked on. Huh-oh. Hoots' Place started to slip. Down we went again...and it seems to have settled in the thirteen thousand range, again down among the slimy things.
Looking up into the branches I wondered who these superior bloggers were that climbed over me on their way to the top. I know that one blog, a good friend whose blog status is impressive, is currently a "Slithering Reptile" at 5882. He's no longer active, has only one post left online from last August and has lost interest in blogging. He got a big boost when he started a couple of years ago by linking with a ready-made flock of Christian blogs which somehow insured a bunch of trackable links all the time but his current status is somehow a carryover from the good ole days. Currently with ninety-four links, no visitor data and zero posts. Hmm.
Picking a couple more at random I find some really sweet folks, again from the Christian community, whose group affiliation with some larger assembly insures a higher status in the Ecosystem. Mommy Monsters (#8881) has been around as long as Hootsbuddy, only posted 18 times this year and a total of twenty posts from 2004 through last year, but has fifty-four links. Wheelbarrow Manor (#8880), next up the tree, shows an archive with one post in 2005 and none until this year, about forty in all. Again, some 54 links.
Like I said, I stand in awe of anyone who has the gumption to tackle a taxonomy of the universe of bloggers.
In the meantime, though, I have to drag up that old line of Groucho's: I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Hoots' Place Degraded by TTLB
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I find it hard to make sense of how we're ranked as well. The chore of having to market the blog is the only thing I dislike about the entire enterprise. Having to seek out others and suggest a link exchange is one of those things that turn it into "work"...
What I'm having trouble understanding is why there are ten or so blogs that link to me permanently, yet never show up on my technorati list, nor do they count on my total.
Big pain in the ass!
I noticed the same thing a couple of years ago. Also, I know of sites that have Hoots' Place on their blogrolls and I know they read because they show up in the referrals, but none of that counts. Oh, well...
As for "marketing" I don't worry. For some reason searches turn up a lot of traffic, and lately email links are also being passed along. I can tell from the sitemeter stats. And believe it or not someone on an Ebay chatboard put a link to my Giant Girl Puppet post and it's getting almost as much traffic as Obama! Go figure.
Post a Comment