7 Wonders of the Blogosphere

Antipater of Sidon and Philon of Byzantium, drew up two of the most well-known lists of the wonders of the ancient world. Since then, other lists came out to include the other wonders that Philon and Antipater did not live long enough to witness. Inspired by Philon and Antipater, today’s post compiles the 7 Wonders of the Blogosphere.

7. Akismet
Along with the birth of the internet, spamming was introduced. This abhored lame practice has been plaguing the blogosphere for quite awhile now. To resolve this widespread problem, bloggers resorted to moderating all their comments, which is time consuming.
“Akismet, or Automattic Kismet, is a spam filtering service created by Automattic and was released on October 25, 2005, the corporation which employs most of the main developers of the weblog platform WordPress. Akismet attempts to filter link spam from blog comments and spam TrackBack pings. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating blogs, and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Akismet has captured one billion spam comments and pings as of March 2007.” - Wikipedia
6. Technorati
What makes Technorati one of the wonders of the Blogosphere is the fact that it indexes millions of weblogs. It also counts the number of links pointing to a blog, known as blog reactions, and uses this information to rank blogs. From blog reactions, Technorati awards Blogs with an Authority. Technorati’s blog ranking are authority are used by review site and advertisers to gauge the value of a blog.
“Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. As of August 2007, Technorati indexes over 94 million weblogs. The name Technorati is a portmanteau pointing to the technological version of literati or intellectuals. Technorati was founded by Dave Sifry and its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, USA. Tantek Çelik was the site’s Chief Technologist.” - Wikipedia
5. Digg
I’m not a fan of Digg but I believe that it deserves a spot in the 7 Wonders of the Blogosphere. Making it on the front page of Digg means crazy traffic that sometimes exceed your bandwidth limit. Digg is one of the valuable sources of traffic for blogs but making it on top is like trying to reach the peak of Mt. Everest.
“Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.” - Wikipedia
4. StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a better form of Digg. Stumblers use a web browser plugin that is used to rate, review and discover great weblogs. Since StumbleUpon was introduced, it has become a valuable source of traffic for blogs. Like Digg, it can spike traffic to the point of exceeding your bandwidth limit.
“StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user — known within the community as a Stumbler — clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any webpage with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles “channel-surfing” the web. Toolbar versions exist for Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite and Internet Explorer, but also works with some independent Mozilla-based browsers.” - Wikipedia
3. Blogger
With millions of bloggers using the services of Blogger, there is no doubt that Blogger deserves the 3rd spot in the 7 Wonders of the Blogosphere. Blogger offers an easy entry in the world of Blogging. Most of the successful bloggers have started their blogging quest at Blogger.com. With the easy interface provided by Blogger, it’s by far the most ideal blogging platform for those starting to blog.
Blogger is a blog publishing system. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Click here for more information.
2. Google
I know that alot of bloggers would probably hate the idea that Google holds the 2nd place of the 7 Wonders of the Blogosphere but considering the influence of Google to blogging, blog monetization and traffic, it just couldn’t be ignored.
Google is the largest search engine and the potential traffic it can give a blog is enormous. Recognizing its potentials, bloggers and webmasters observe the proper search engine optimization techniques. Also, Google’s Page Ranking, although its relevance has diminished over questions on its reliability and credibility, is still widely used as a yardstick to measure a blog’s value.
1. Wordpress
On top of the list is Wordpress. Do I need to explain why?
“WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.” - Wikipedia
There you have it, the 7 Wonders of the Blogosphere. If you feel that I missed a “Wonder” that should have been included, you are free to share it through the comments.
Thanks for your time.