Another blog rank list is created.

July 27th, 2007 | Africana

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How unoriginal to create a new list here of the Top 50 South African blogs. Why?

Ranking and popularity lists are so overdone, overated and overbearingly boring. And as usual so overly predictable.

C’mon guys, get real and get some original thinking going. How on earth can you vote for sites that are ranking/popularity list sites anyway? I don’t get it.

Why don’t you scour the South African blogging scene and come up with some really original stuff that has been lurking there unoticed but fully deserving of some attention?

You can’t tell me that all you can think of is Muti, Afrigator and Amatomu? And as for Mweb, IOL, SA Rugby…….? Oh puleeez wake up.

People like Dolce at La Dolce Vita, Michelle at Seeking Serenity, Max at Hunter of Genius and Nic from SA Rocks are more deserving than any mentioned above. So is Dave Duarte at Marketing Geek and let’s not forget Eric at Eric Edelstein.

Even the arch villain himself Mr Bollard here at the Sunday Times has better content that SA Rugby! Please stop creating lists. It’s not what blogging is about. But then you have your choice and I can respect that but not the same old sites time and time again. S African blogging needs new blogging blood to stock up the lists!

Go find them.

Another blog rank list is created

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9 comments ↓

#1 Max Kaizen on 07.28.07 at 10:38 am

thank you o’ complimentary one how lovely, and ditto for you. The fresh look on iScatterlings rocks!
Evolution demands different phases of experimentation to grow strong roots on new iterations and social phenomena..
we edge.dwellers tend to have a strong bias towards the original, surprising, beautiful, creative of early adoption.
But it’s those who emulate and pick up on what has worked before who often reap the fattest rewards as the early majority starts rolling into the playground.

Depends on where we want to hang out & who we want respect/acceptance from I reckon?

#2 Eric Edelstein on 07.28.07 at 6:29 pm

Your hyperlink for Dave gives an error

and as i agree with you that he is deserving, i think he deserves his link to work properly

#3 Rob on 07.28.07 at 10:24 pm

Eric,

It is corrected. And because yo spotted it, you got added to the blogroll and to the article! So howz them for apples?! Or tinned guavas?

#4 Arthur on 07.29.07 at 5:21 am

You appear to have missed the point! The idea behind the Top 50 list was to unearth some of the great original blogs and sites out there. The voting is based on user popularity, not number of visits or any other variable - only how popular is a site with its visitors.

When I decided to develop this list, I tried to cast the net as wide as possible and made my intention known, trying to get as much wide-spread support as possible to ensure an accurate representation.

This exercise was never meant to be a formal survey or anything scientific. It was merely a bit of fun to discover some new sites on the South African internet scene and to publicise those. The final list will be published next week. Please go to Online Trek on Wednesday 1 August to see the final list - you may be surprised.

I would agree that more originality in the voting would have been good. However such is the nature of internet democracy - he who gets in first, casts the vote!

As I said to Nic of SA Rocks, lets not be too serious about this initiative. Why not just embrace it, let it take its course and have some fun with it?

For interest - I am meeting with someone in August to develop a strategy to formalise this initiative for 2008 - in the meantime, just enjoy it!

#5 Rob on 07.29.07 at 10:21 am

Arthur,

I don’t think I have missed the point. Popularity lists, ranking lists, celebrity lists and any other lists such as Tagging and 5 Things You Do Not Know About Me etc are just so out of date and overdone.

While lists in their varied formats will always be there because some bloggers firmly favour this type of ridicule, your methodology for rankings is at best very, very circumspect.

Any list based on a bunch of individuals’ subjectivity has to be questionable. What control group criteria are you using? How many in the group? What number of responses is regarded as a fair and reasonable representation of the popularity of a particular site.

I appreciate that you are doing this for fun but it certainly will not get my vote.

#6 Dave Duarte on 07.29.07 at 12:13 pm

Thanks so much for the kind mention Robert. Agreed that the blog lists reinforce hegemony in the SA blogging diaspora.

#7 Arthur on 07.29.07 at 4:12 pm

Thanks for your comments Rob.

Please understand that I have never tried to position this survey as anything remotely scientific so there has been no control group, no minimum number of votes to qualify and so forth. I am therefore not in any way pretending that the results are representative of the entire South African internet - for me to do that would be extremely naive!

Your criticism is therefore not entirely unjustified - just misplaced. A proper controlled survey was not the intention. If it was, then you and others would have every right to tear it apart. However it was not - therefore criticism of its validity is not valid.

Dave, as much as I respect your standing in the South African blogging arena, I have to disagree with your comment. If this survey, in any small way, unearths some relatively unknown but outstanding blogs, would you still feel the same way? The entire list of nominations will be up on my Online Trek blog on Wednesday. Why not take a look and see the variety of sites that have been nominated. I can assure you that it is not just the “big boys” who get the nod.

I also have the desire to unearth some of the SA blogging gems. It is for this reason that I now also have a weekly “New Blog Of The Week” posting each Friday. Running the Top 50 survey was simply another tool to reach the same end.

Thanks Rob and Dave for the excellent work that you do through your blogs and in promoting the extension of New Media. You are both professionals in this arena. I am an amateur blogger because I enjoy the hobby and follow developments in internet marketing and New Media closely. I will continue to be a hobbyist who enjoys what I do and I will not take myself too seriously!

We need to be working together to promote the extension of the SA blogging community. We may choose different methodologies and we may disagree with those chosen methodologies. However if the result is the same, shouldn’t we be standing together?

#8 Dolce on 07.31.07 at 7:10 am

Thanks chicken. MWAH!

and I kinda agree with both you and Arthur. On one hand, lists like this are often only representative of that extended community (for example, this is the first I’ve heard of it). On the other, lists sometimes throw up some unexpected and deliciously lovely links. Just gotta take them with a pinch, I guess.

PS Bert…are you not drowning over there, or are you on high ground?

#9 Maximus on 12.20.07 at 10:09 am