Perfect Blog Entries for Popular Blogs

Posted on September 6, 2006

Wired has a pretty cynical article about blog popularity and what the most popular entry would be for some of the most popular weblogs.

Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to laugh derisively and hit the Delete button.
Another approach for advertising your blog is to mention it as much as possible in conversation; you'd be surprised how many people are fascinated to hear you have a blog and want to know more, especially if you were expecting the number to be greater than zero.
However, there are many popular blogs already in existence, and if you want people to think you're cool, you're probably better off claiming you were a "guest blogger" for one of them. Your average blog has so many guest bloggers and such a crappy search feature that nobody will ever be able to prove you wrong.

The article follows with a list of blogs and what a top post on them might look like. You do notice a specific blogging style and theme with many blogs over a certain period of time and Wired's Lore Sjöberg picked out the patterns in several of the top blogs. They are all pretty funny but here are a few good ones from Wired's article.

Boing Boing: Crocheted replica of subway map cracks DRM on collection of old video games.
Gawker: Paris Hilton does pretty much anything.
Engadget: Samsung releases new cell phone/mp3 player/camera/web browser/GPS/game player/wireless hub. Now in gray!
Cute Overload: A kitten licks a puppy while the puppy licks a bunny.

The Metafilter one is also funny. We don't buy the cynical idea behind the article that all the popular blogs have already been created -- or that no one would be interested in your new blog -- but it is good for a laugh.