For the last couple of weeks, Vanessa has written posts that provide highlights from the electronic journals, or blogs, that our class is writing. “Tour de Blog,” “Around the Blogs,” and “Blog-o-Rific” are the titles of these brief run-downs. I understand the intent is to suggest different topics to read about and possibly write a comment.
However, it has had a totally different effect on me. I want my blog to be on the highlight post. I fretted over interesting topics and zippy commentary and I was stuck searching for that one post that would put me above. But, alas, I was unsuccessful and came up with this instead.
Vanessa’s highlight roll is similar to my initial experience with Technorati. According to Wikipedia, Technorati is a search engine for searching blogs and has indexed millions of pieces of tagged social media. Its front page shows you rising blog posts and rising news stories based on “attention.” It organizes its information by channels and uses a system that rates a blog’s “authority.”
It allows me to see what other people on the web are interested in, but I don’t want to see. I want to focus on my own interests, and if for some reason it is popular, great. The rising headlines as I type are: Jude Law’s having a baby with a mystery woman (on the politics channel?)and Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz may have tested positive for drugs in 2003. It doesn’t even help me with conversation for cocktail hour.
It seems that Technorati could encourage a lot of junk on the Internet, as long as it had “authority.” Could it encourage bloggers to write more about popular topics and take the popular side of arguments? Isn’t this similar to the frustration that we have with our news media that follow the topics that sell papers and increase viewership?
About Me
- Eirin
- I am 34 years old. I live in Tallahassee, Florida, my hometown. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends and stay busy working full time while going to graduate school.
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I've been on Technorati since 2004. I watch my authority - right now it is 16. The authority is actually based on who is linking to you. So the more people who like what you wrote, and link back to it, the higher your authority.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, I didn't intend to get on the "Wall of fame" by walking around in Second Life naked. But that's been the story of the week at my office. :)
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