Techmeme Leaderboard: Hopefully Improving Blog Quality

October 1st, 2007

Techmeme, everybody’s favorite tech blog aggregator, announced a new way of looking at Techmeme headlines called the Techmeme Leaderboard. It’s basically a top 100 list of the sources most linked to from Techmeme headlines, over a thirty day period.

From what I understand, Techmeme spiders a selective list of technology blogs. I’m not exactly sure how a blog gets included in that list, but it seems to be as simple as being linked a few times from a blog that’s already in the list (at least that’s how Webomatica got in there). In addition, said list seems to regenerate every few days or so.

Techmeme’s front page lists several headlines with links to blogs that link to that headline article, beneath. The blogs that appear in the “discussion” area beneath the headline are ones in the aforementioned list.

Now for an article to appear as a Techmeme headline itself, it seems enough blogs on said list have to link to your article. I’m guessing the critical number is three (this is also based on past experience).

So there are two barriers to entry to getting an article of yours listed as a headline on Techmeme: first, you have to get your blog on the internal Techmeme list, second, you have to get other blogs on said list to link to a particular article you’ve written.

Why am I reiterating all this? Because with the introduction of the Techmeme Leaderboard, there is now a third hurdle for the techno-blogging elite to try to overcome. You’ll have to jump those first two barriers often enough times within a month to make it onto the list.

Anyhow, although Webomatica occasionally appears on Techmeme, there is no question that I’m decidedly in the “B list” of techblogging. Because of the above “rules” I appear often in the “discussion” beneath headlines, but rarely as a headline itself — I think I can count the number of times one one hand. This is fair: more often than not, my blog posts are reactions to news and not breaking stories or writing supremely original content that’s truly link-worthy.

But based on that analysis, that’s why I think the Leaderbord might improve blog writing quality. Simply sitting back and “techmaiming” — reacting to headlines — isn’t going to be good enough. You’ll have to both react and add some insight that gets others to link to you, pushing you into headline statues. I think that’s why TechCrunch, GigaOm are there but also joined by Mathew Ingram and Scripting News.

The only bad things I can say about the list is that as Scoble observes — most of the sources on that list aren’t blogs — they’re traditional news organizations (#3, New York Times, #5, CNET News, #8, BBC). And a final complaint: this list has potential to become yet another piece of evidence that “A-list bloggers” keep everyone else out in the cold.

Personally, I’d like to see the blogs above 100 (as does SmoothSpan) because I think there will be more interesting blogs written by genuine individuals. And yeah, I’m a little curious to see if Webomatica ended up somewhere around #4,392.