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ROTFL alert: this blog attacked by splogs but Technorati and MSM don't get it

By | March 8, 2006, 8:23pm PST

Summary: I usually don’t examine my own navel here, but if you are a blogger, read blogs, or even read about blogs, you’ll like this one. First of all, a few of definitions: "splogs"- spam blogs, script-compiled collections of non-blogs in blog clothing with post titles and/or keywords that are strictly there to maximize Google AdWords and AdSense. MSM- [...]

I usually don’t examine my own navel here, but if you are a blogger, read blogs, or even read about blogs, you’ll like this one.

First of all, a few of definitions:

"splogs"- spam blogs, script-compiled collections of non-blogs in blog clothing with post titles and/or keywords that are strictly there to maximize Google AdWords and AdSense.

MSM- the MainStream Media, but of course.

ROTFL- Rolling On The Floor, Laughing. 

So let me walk you through this one.

Wednesday nite, the main page on Technorati noted that 30.1 million blogs were searchable:

technoratisearchbox.jpg 

First of all, that number is a misnomer. A misnomer for two reasons:

For some blogs, Technorati lists hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of pages.

Is each page a "blog?" No foolin’ way. So no, there are not 30.1 million blogs. Posts, yes, blogs no.

And the MSM never seems to get this fact down. They simply spit back the number of "blogs" that Technorati lists as "blogs" and treat that as gospel. 

Even if we accept that there are 30.1 million blog posts, or blog pages, that still doesn’t account for all the splogs.

How do I know this? Because it happened to me on Wednesday (yesterday).

Now this is precious.

On Wednesday, I made a post entitled: Platform-itis: The Bird Flu Of Digital Content Marketing. There was no info about bird flu- just used that as a point of comparison.

Ready for a ROFL? 

A few hours later I am "vanity surfing" on Technorati to see who among my fellow bloggers had linked to my post, or even mentioned it.

I got the following (I blacked the ad out)

technoratibirdflu_1.jpg 

Yea, right. A bird flu splog and a pandemic virus splog. 

Maybe I’ll just say "bird flu" right here and see if the splogs pick this post up.

Pandemic, yea right. And not just bird flu. The splog-o-sphere.

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Disclosure

Russell Shaw

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?page_id=1879

Biography

Russell Shaw

Russell Shaw passed away in March 2008. He was an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. A specialist in open source architectures and strategies, Microsoft applications, wireless networking, and multimedia content creation, Russell covered these fields regularly for several IT, business and consumer publications, including Investor's Business Daily and the syndicated IT news site NewsFactor.com.

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