The second accounting of The Feedster 500 Top Blogs was announced . . . and my humble little blog was violently kicked off its perch as i predicted would happen. I was number 381 and was quite excited when i got the news, but now am a SUB-500 blog, just like the rest of you peons. And Tim Challies of Challies.com also gets the back door and the gold watch.
Megablogs like Engadget.com (No. 1, 165,000 links) and TVSquad.com (No. 3) are large commercially driven blogs with dozens of contributors. These are dominating the Top 20 with over 30,000 links each. Weblogs, Inc is the company that creates and monitors them. Now that these blogs are competing with non-commerical personal blogs (like my little mom and pop cornerstore blog), there is not much hope in the future to have the same level of presence and findability. But maybe that will challenge us all to team up more on group blogs.
Aussie Darren Rowse, (author of emerging church blog Living Room and a thousand dozen others), makes a HUGE splash with ProBlogger (No. 129, 5,485 links). This is an incredibly good looking site thats stuffed with blogging tips. Definitely one of the BEST BLOGS IN THE WORLD. Well done, Darren!
A few blogs on theTop 500 list stuck out to me.
- PostSecret.com - I like the use of old media - handwritten and typewriter words on a postcard or photo.
- PepysDiary.com - The deeply hyper-texted life and times of Samuel Pepys in 1660's London. You simply MUST take a look at this blog that made No. 47 with an incredible 11,000 links! Its tightly organized and simply presented.
BoingBoing.net (No. 2, 81,000 links) a perennial favorite, simply the best blog in the world. Its contributors are superstars. Forgive the namedropping, but I met Cory Doctorow in London at Tech Active. These guys are not in it for the money. Trust me.
Church/Spirituality related blogs?
Some good ones here but none of them are very original in their artistic design or approach to blogging. Or in their use of technology. But its great to see them here.
LaShawnBarber.com (No. 117, 5,886 links) - The most impressive of all faith blogs. I confess I have only been on her site once before today. She runs an excellent blog and deserves her rating. I just added her to my RSS reader.
TheEvangelicalOutpost.com - (No. 383, 1,9992 links). Not pretty nor personal, but a great source of Christian blogformation.
OnehandClapping (No. 442) seems to be more of an American patriotic politcial blog in the flavor of HughHewitt.com. But author Donald Sensing occasionally has some religious news and so he makes this list.
Amy Wellborn just makes the list, and in doing so kicks my butt right off the Top500, with Open Book.(No. 494) A blog so named because a blog is like an open book, and because One open Book roots her. A Catholic blog in the good old-fashioned personal diary style.
Technorati Tags: blog, church, religion, spirituality
HughHewitt.com (No. 71, 8.643 links), is more of a conservative-Republican-political commentary than a faith-blog but Hugh loves Jesus and often talks about church and religion. His site is a carry over from his radio program and is updated daily and read by thousands upon thousands. Hugh was involved in the Godblogcon.com event for Christian bloggers last month.
Dave from Redeemer Covenant Church made the Top500 with 40 Days of Purpose Blog (No. 460) - a blog based on the book "40 Days of Purpose". I am not sure how this one ended up there. He hardly ever blogs, there are no comments, and hardly anyone has visited. Maybe the pro-gay post on the top was so popular that that it attracted permanent links?
ProLifeBlogs.com (N. 472, 1658 links) - A Catholic anti-abortion site that makes the list.
As for those who didn't make the list this month and want to. . . . You need to attract a whole lot of permanent links and the only fair way to do that is to have a reason for people to come back daily - which comes down to GOOD CONTENT that is relative to the people who want it. And if you have a blog that is an honest reflection of your life and passions and thoughts, and you have 100 regular readers who want to track with you, then I think you rock and should be honored, whether or not you get 1000 permanent links.
don, from one hand clapping, is a local pastor here in my area, his political views (especially the war parts) stem from his time in military service (i believe as a soldier & chaplain). his son is also serving in iraq at this time as well. i don't generally read his as he does a lot of the "if people read my 'this' then they would know why 'this & this is right'".
Posted by: gavin | November 28, 2005 at 05:27 PM