Blogrolling Hot 500!

Last Tuesday, Jason “Weblogs, Inc.” Calacanis wrote in his blog:

Well, I’m sick of the Technorati 100. Now, it’s good to have a list (more on this later), but we need a better list

that is more accurate and includes many more people, and both old-school and new-school bloggers.

… and I’m willing to pay for it—sort of (more details on that to come). 🙂

Some background: Having created what became an absurdly powerful 100 list with my last company, Silicon Alley

Reporter, I’ve seen the controversy, venom, and power such lists can create. I’ve got some mixed feelings about

them truth be told. These lists are really powerful at building an industry. They help define emerging spaces, and they

get new players press, readers, and clients (i.e. advertisers). So, a good list is good, and a bad list is—well—bad. We

have a bad list now and we need a good list.

…

Where is the Feedster 500, the Blogpulse 500, the Pubsub 500, the Yahoo Blog Search 500, the Bloglines 500, and the

IceRocket 500?

Well, we’ve got the Blogrolling Hot 500, located at hot.blogrolling.com!

The Blogrolling Hot 500 is list of the 500 weblogs most linked to by subscribers to Blogrolling.com’s

service. Yes, you’ll find the usual suspects on the Hot 500, but there

are a number of not-so-well-known blogs that make the list — I’ve

discovered dozens of blogs I’d never heard of before.

(Unfortunately, this blog doesn’t make the list. Poop.)

Someone observed that since the list’s ranking are determined by

outgoing links from Blogrolling.com users only, it is skewed in favour

of the blogosphere’s early adopters. We’d like to point out that two

thirds of Blogrolling’s user base joined after we purchased it in February 2004. Our Hot 500 engine is tracking some interesting data in the form of over 7 million outgoing link URLs.

If you’ve made the Top 500, feel free to take the “Hot 500” button

shown above. It’s the official Blogrolling Hot 500 button and was

whipped up by Yours Truly.

By the bye, Blogrolling.com’s service is still free for one blogroll,

and US$19.95 gets you a gold account, which lets you have up to ten

blogrolls and a number of advanced features.