I caught this post on how Feedster Top 500 measures blog links differently than say, Technorati.

Okay.
Any of us that have blogged for awhile are aware of how quickly communication is changing and how advertisers, tech companies, corporations, businesses, pr firms, marketers and people wishing to make money from their blog care a great deal about rankings.

I did when I first started blogging and there weren’t a lot of ranking engines out there. I had the ranking fever for about six months and I had it bad.

Since Technoriti remains paralysed I’ve started using Talk Digger, an easy to use site developed by a gentleman in Quebec.

I need to keep things simple, because I know better than to go near the coding in the blog template or the hosting company control panel. To be honest, I’ve never paid attention to the page that comes up in MT when I hit post.
It says something to the effect, pinging these sites.

I’ve never read it.
Having actually read the page at Talk Digger telling me how it works, I explored.
That’s all I’ve done, I guess there are codes that can be used, but I haven’t contacted my tech for a chat about how far behind all the newest technology BDBO’s owner and proprieter and chief word slinger actually is.

That’s partly because looking at the Feedster 500, I haven’t figured out if I care anymore. It is great to see blogs from other countries finally getting found by bots or however this information is found. It’s good to see a couple of god-blogs in there, including Canadian Tim Challies. He knows his US theological audience well, and knows how to engage.

Tech sites remain big deals, according to this month’s Feedster 500, right up there with US pundit sites.
Are bloggers that gadget happy?

Back to Talk Digger.
What an interesting array of services available to bloggers with the time to explore them.
Technorati has been in flatline since I started clicking over to Talk Digger, so I took time to look at a few of the other services it monitors.

Pub Sub looks like a stock portfolio. Clean with lots of graphs and important looking colours. If I was prone to guilt about posting, a few of the graphs would send me right over the edge. But I didn’t find looking at my blog stats and graphs particularly edifying. I’m not sure I’m the type of blogger they are looking for loyalty from.

Bloglines, basically practical, clean, and I don’t have a clue what or who it monitors. Is it a Technorati that people sign up for, and put a code into their blog template? I have a bloglines password stashed somewhere, so I know I signed up. But I’ve rarely used it.

There is a service called IceRocket that is new to me.

For now Talk Digger is doing the job that I need, as a very ordinary blogger who really isn’t interested in marketing, being important, getting paid, or being seen by who ever it is that tells bloggers they are important.
All I want is an opportunity to engage those who took the time to visit, found something that interested them here, and posted on their blog. I just want the opportunity to go over and say thank you. I want to observe trends in the sub-space of god-blogs without pressure. I want to enjoy Canadian pundits when that bug bites me and explore the blogosphere on my terms. I want a lot of things from blogging, but not things that can be measured.

When I look at bloggers that have gone ‘pro’ like Darren Rowse in Australia, it is easy to see the copious amounts of work put into keeping up with what is going on in the economic push in blogging. Blogging is his business, and like any business, it eats his day as much as running a corner store would. He is one of the few bloggers I have on messenger. We don’t get to chat much anymore, although he burns the midnight candle. He’s working incredibly hard to be a pro. It is definitely not for most of us.

Shoot, I haven’t gotten around to my own RSS feed yet.
In spite of all my talk and exploration, I haven’t figured out the need for one.
I don’t even sign into my ISP home page much.
I find myself routing for Talk Digger because it’s simple to use, like Technorati used to be, or TTLB or BlogStreet or a lot of tools that used to be simple to use.
Blogrolling.com puts a asterick beside a blog on the sidebar that indicates that blog was just updated.
That’s nice. But, it is a bit like the phone. Just because it rings doesn’t mean I’m going to pick it up. I have a habit of turning the ringer off and leaving it off for extended periods of time. I understand that is a luxury a lot of people with busy lives can’t have. It’s a luxury I can’t afford not to.

Likewise, the last thing I want is to clutter up online time with tools that alert me.
McAfee had a popup red alert on a worm last week that sent me right out of the chair. I appreciate it, but the service did it’s job and downloaded whatever was needed, and let me know my criticals were up to date. The red alert was a bit much. At least I have the option of turning off the popup and tone.

I have a pile of blogs in my favorite folder. Well, yeah, they are all blogs in my favorites.
I go visit when I chose too, jump off blog rolls and take the time to wander on my timetable. And I think that is what most of us do.

The reality is many of the blogs that are meaningful to me aren’t going to make the top 500 of any measuring tool. My online life isn’t going to change with the perceived rise and falls of links fortunes for BDBO according to some measuring tool that purports to tell me that sort of thing.

Truth is, that excitement is over. Being timely acknowledged in the Philippines, and being acknowledged by Blogs Canada were genuine thrills. Getting linked by a couple of bloggers I really enjoy reading and have a great deal of respect for, made the initial hollow times of blogging warmer. I’ll never lose that sense of honour and gratitude. They matter because it was people, not counters or bots that took the time.

Making the top percentage in a list somewhere doesn’t have the same kick it did a few years ago when I was a newbie. I don’t need to feed the legend in my own mind anymore, I figured out it isn’t always healthy.

However, after looking at Talk Digger, maybe I could look at the pinging sites message on MT and talk to my tech. Or not.:^)