Missing the Point on the 2000 Bloggers Affair – Is that What Weblogging Is All About?

9 thoughts on “Missing the Point on the 2000 Bloggers Affair – Is that What Weblogging Is All About?”

  1. I completely agree with you. I did it for fun and to find new blogs which I have. I don’t care about my ranking. I have built up my blogroll and regular readers by finding blogs I like and linking to them. Thanks for this post. I’m happy to see other people think like I do.

  2. Luis-

    I have some observations relevant to this which I would be interested in getting your reaction to.

    I think that those of us who are interested in social media and social networking tend to be, well, let’s just say that we tend to be a bit more “social” and more comfortable with technology than many other folks. We’re willing to go the extra mile to understand what’s involved in linking to others and in getting others to link to us. We gravitate towards online groups where people like us tend to hang out. Because of how we use the web and the tools available to us, we have evolved relatively sophisticated personal strategies for keeping up with what’s going on in the various groups and communities that interest us.

    Naturally, personal relationships are an important element of this that we intertwine with our online relationships. Because of the importance we place on our online relationships for both personal and professional development, we may also tend to assign relatively more trust and confidence in the information we obtain from our online networks than we do, say, to information we obtain from a formal web search of Google or one of the other search engines.

    As we know, the information we obtain from our online communities is not only direct information (such as an answer to a direct question) but also information about what our trusted colleagues think is important to track (hence the sharing of, say, del.icio.us tags). So if someone comes with an easy-to-join “shake and bake” network of individuals we want to know or emulate, we’ll join, not only because of the importance of linking but because of the likelihood we’ll find a few more interesting sources of information – as well as a few more people we’d like to get to know better.

    Maybe what we’re seeing with phenomena such as “2000 Bloggers” is nothing more complex than what is expressed in sayings “birds of a feather stick together” and “how to make friends and influence people.”

    What I find interesting (and which I’ve blogged about in posts like this: http://www.ddmcd.com/engagement.html) is that such “communities” can form, morph, and decay so rapidly. What we’re then left with is a bunch of links – and maybe some new friends. Which is not such a bad thing, after all, even though all of this can happen without ever having a face to face meeting!

    – Dennis

  3. Good comments Luis. FWIW, I’m in the 2000 too, and while I didn’t send in my photo/blog, like you, I don’t see the issue.

    The link counts will drop off Technorati in a few months, and we’ll all go back to the blogging our thoughts. I’m sure Google, Technorati, etc., can account for link spikes like this, and will continue to value those making a long term contribution.

  4. I love the 2000 bloggers idea! And I publically support Tino and what he did.

    So why can’t he just have a webpage that has all the photos and faces, and we just link to it?

    Why do we have to embed our photos in it and each blogger blog it?

  5. Luis, You and I both stated that for most participants this was “just a fun excercise”. I agree with you, “a good chunk of the best stuff on the blogosphere is on lesser known weblogs” – but I would rather discover them based on contextual search then on their mug-shots.
    You seem to believe that this was all about the social discovery, and people would link to whatever they found interesting. Well, sorry, I don’t see that selective discovery, when the code got published, anyone who copy/pasted it into their blogs automatically linked to 2000 other blogs without ever looking at those blogs. It became a link-generating machine.

    But here’s the best part: Technorati did not shut down the 2000 Bloggers initiative. All they did was to exclude it from their index. You and anyone who likes it can still repost the collage and click to blogs individually. The “discovery” process is intact – the question is how many bloggers would continue, now that the secondary (?) incentive is gone.

    We know that Tino, the guy who launched it lost interest – but that should not come as a surprise, is you read this interview, his motives become crystal clear: links and increased traffic to his business site. But that’s only him, you and hundreds of others can continue the social discovery process and even manually link to sites you find and like …

  6. Thanks a lot, folks, for dropping by and for adding further into the conversation. Lots of great stuff in there ! Appreciated the input.

    Deviousdiva, thanks a bunch for the candid and honest feedback. "I have built up my blogroll and regular readers by finding blogs I like and linking to them". I agree with you 100% on that one ! It is not the local and temporary link love that will eventually get you there. It is actually working your way in a committed way towards sharing your knowledge and information with those people who you bump into out there in the blogosphere and for that to happen we need initiatives like this one where you can eventually bump into weblogs that would be worth while the fight and the sharing with them. I am glad to hear as well I am not the only one who thinks that way, too!

    Dennis, what a fantastic set of comments ! Thanks much for sharing them over here. They are worth while becoming a single weblog post on their own ! I think that you have described pretty well how social networking should be perceived all along as a powerful method to build up meaningful and lasting relationships that we would be able to work our way through in order to come up with the best. With the stuff that still remain there for a longer period. The long term investment that I mentioned above.

    It is interesting to see how you have also viewed this particular initiative of the 2000 bloggers in pretty much the same way / fashion I have; as an innovative way to gain some traction into forming those relationships put together together at random for those folks who may be looking for lesser known minds and their thoughts in order to enrich their own. Yes, indeed, those links will eventually fade out and disappear but some of the relationships that have come through because of it will remain and, to me, that is also what matters. The social computing experiment more than just the link love. That is just something temporary that we should ignore and move on. Focus more on the long lasting effect of weblogging, the one where we connect with others and build up those relationships with further.

    Steve, I think you have hit the nail on the head with this particular comment: "The link counts will drop off Technorati in a few months, and we’ll all go back to the blogging our thoughts […] and will continue to value those making a long term contribution". Yes, this is not the first time or initiative that has had a similar effect. I mean, how many times have we seen much more popular initiatives than this one (Technorati being one of them already!) making its way into the blogosphere and nobody complaining about it? I guess that people thought it was just going to be ignored big time, but I supposed that 2000 bloggers linking back and forth without the powers that be involved in the whole effort was thought of as threatening. When in reality what matters is that webloggers work their way through sharing what they know with others engaging in lasting conversations that would help enrich what they, and us, already have. That, to me, is what really matters. No doubt.

  7. (Whooops, I posted the above comment entry far too soon. I just saw that both Jeremiah and Zoli have shared their thoughts. So here we go with some further comments on their insights)

    Jeremiah, RE: "So why can’t he just have a webpage that has all the photos and faces, and we just link to it? Why do we have to embed our photos in it and each blogger blog it?" Well, for a number of reasons, I guess. First one because I bet that having a massive collage of very small pictures with just a single link was probably not going to be very much attractive to those involved and therefore would not have had the same effect.

    Why each blogger blogged about it? Hummm, I don’t think that every blogger part of the initiative actually blogged about it, otherwise it would have shown big time by now!, but I guess that the main reason why some of those folks did that was for that ego sense of being part of something cool. As simple as that. I mean, we have seen it before. Not long ago, there was a popular publication on the subject of The Web Celeb Top 25 most influential marketing blogs out there in the blogosphere. And what did some of them do? Yes, that is right! They blogged about it! And people linked to those as well ! And big time ! So this is a similar type of thing, except that this time around it was a whole bunch more of lesser known bloggers who did it. Big deal? Not really. I least, not to me. See some of the reasoning above. Appreciated the input though, Jeremiah. Thanks for that!

    Zoli, thanks for the insightful comments, too! RE: "[…] but I would rather discover them based on contextual search then on their mug-shots." Yes, me, too, but you and I know that some of the best blogs out there are way far too deep down on the search results scale and before you know it you are actually diverted into something else you bump along the way and never come back. It happens all the time, so every little help that those lesser known blogs can get is probably very welcome, I would say. The challenge for me is not going for the link love, actually. It is actually being able to maintain it over a substantial amount of time.

    That is where the challenge is. Getting occasional links to your blog is a good, and nice, thing, but to me is much more rewarding being able to keep up with those and that is what it will show out of the 2000 bloggers, those who were thinking about the long term and continue to work through earning some more meaningful links and those who were just looking for that link juice. But we have got to start at some point, don’t you think?

    "It became a link-generating machine." Hummm, you think so? If that would have been the case I guess both of our Technorati rankings would be well above the 2000 mark by now; instead mine got increased by a few further links. I don’t think that is was just a link-generation machine. I think there were some folks out there who actively looked through their links and referrals to see where those other folks were coming from. They probably spent some time over there and decided to move on or add them to their blogrolls. I think there is a bit of everything in here, not just link love. At least, I didn’t see it that way. (Gosh, I hope I am not the only one either!)

    "Technorati did not shut down the 2000 Bloggers initiative." Yes, that is true. Technorati just protected itself from it, but Tino shut it down altogether and just left the image, so I don’t think there would have been any follow up just like that. I bet though that if it would open up again there would be some traction still. And you know what? That traction, I am sure, would be coming from those folks who truly wanted to discover other blogs, not the ones who were looking for other incentives. I am sure.

    Yes, primarily that was the main purpose from Tino, build traffic for his Web site, but one of the nice side effects is that it empowered everyone else, specially lesser known weblogs to get a bit more visibility. So Tino’s great idea just become far bigger for him than whatever he anticipated, because otherwise I am sure he would not have killed it just like that. And the best part of it is that webloggers will continue to discover other weblogs through whatever the options available.

    Something tells me that 2000 Bloggers just open up the can of worms. There will be many more coming up, I am sure, and we will just have to wait and see how we will react to them, but so far it has been an enlightening experience. At least, to me and those who are always looking out for some other interesting reads than the usual suspects 😉

    Again, thanks everyone for dropping by and for sharing your thoughts thus far. They have been rather enlightening and helpful. Keep them coming!

  8. I don’t think that the 2000 Bloggers meme was such a big deal. I did introduce a number of new bloggers to my blog. Now it’s up to me to keep them interested by writing good content.

    What I don’t get is this emphasis on the Technorati ranking system in the first place.

  9. Hi Dawud! Thanks a lot for dropping by and for the feedback comments ! Welcome to elsua! I certainly agree with you that it wasn’t really that much of a big deal. However, I guess that plenty of people, higher up on their Technorati rankings, didn’t feel very comfortable with having other lesser known weblogs claim, rather quickly, several hundreds of links from all over the place. This will, obviously, raise the alarm from people who may have worked really hard to raise up their ranking.

    However, the way I see it, and something that I agree with you as well, is that link love is just the beginning. Those links will eventually not be really relevant in the medium / long term without some really good content and being constant your own weblogging efforts, which is, I guess, what most of us are here for, in the first place. Right?

    (Oh, by the way, thanks to the 2000 Bloggers meme I have actually discovered your weblog and have already subscribed to it. So there you have got another good reason for having such initiative! Thanks again for the great content!)

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