Blogging Class War: Legislative Action, or That’s Entertainment

March 20th, 2007

Blogs If a true blog class war breaks out, what should we do? A thread at Deep Jive Interests keeps getting longer (65 comments!). I suggest government intervention.

Blog SEC: Let’s have a federal investigation to find out if there’s some nefarious link exchange or insider ad trading going on between A-listers.
Blog Welfare: Bloggers having a hard time garnering links can apply to receive a subsistence amount from the government, to keep them from giving up blogging completely and becoming a burden on society.
Link Tax: The Technorati 100 have 10% of their links collected annually for redistribution to less fortunate blogs.
Blog Unions: Z-listers unite and demand fair reciprocal linkage and trackbacks or there will be no more links to A-List blogs. There’s more of us than there are of them.
Blog Charity: Ad campaign depicting an overworked blogger, eyes bleary from a late night after a hard day’s work, striving to collect a few Adsense dollars to buy food for the kids. Caption reads: “Have you linked to a Z-lister Today? One comment can make a world of difference.”

If these ideas sound too draconian, how about a series of reality TV shows poking fun at the differences between A-list and Z-list bloggers? It would at least increase awareness of the A-list, Z-list issue.

BlogSwap: An A-lister trades places with a Z-lister. The A-lister has to start from scratch, blogging under a pseudonym and try to build readership. The Z-lister takes over the A-lister’s blog, writing under their name. The winner is the one with the most success at either increasing Technorati rank or avoiding massive falloff in popularity (inspired by Baron VC).
BlogMakeover: A dejected Z-lister gets a full blog redesign by a web designer, SEO expert, and professional writer. The Technorati Top 100 agree to donate one link apiece to the Z-lister to help them along in their new-found digs.
Beauty And The Geek: Various A-listers and Z-listers are paired up to solve puzzles together.
- A-lister challenge: get comments on a blog with zero readers.
- Z-lister challenge: fend off 15 million spam comments and write a post knowing Valleywag will mock everything you say.
Blog-Boot Camp: An A-lister whips ten wimpy Z-listers that want inclusion on Techmeme into shape. Example situation: Z-lister thinks success means writing one post a week. The A-lister orders them do twenty posts an hour as training. Much screaming involved.