Aug 31 2007

Weekly Update 30th August

Published by at 1:02 pm under Aussosphere,news limited,weekly updates

Weekly Update

1. New blogs debuting in the Top 100 Australian Blogs

None! Though we do have some yo-yoing going on. This week, I’ve included Feedburner subscription counts for around 30 blogs that have their Awareness API active. This does not factor into the index, but I thought I’d include it for interest (courtesy of Ratified, for the most part).

Speaking of Ratified, I’ve noticed that their rankings don’t always seem to follow their formula. The formula is Score = (t x .55) + (PRx100) + (f.b x 3.75) .

I’ll give you one example, of a few I noticed.

Number 88 is Chrysalis Creativity.

t=49 17  PR=4 FB=0 (Awareness API not activated)

Score=(49 17x.55)+(4×100)+(0x3.75) = 409.35

Number 91 92 is Life in the Country

t= 290 112  PR=0 FB=106 105

Score=(290 112x.55)+(0x100)+(106 105×3.75) = 455.35

So technically Life in the Country *should* rank better than Chrysalis Creativity, according to the formula. Not sure what’s up with that.

Update 1/9: Katie just commented that ratified advised her the “t” refers to the number of blogs linking to a site, NOT the number of links to the blog. It still doesn’t compute, however.
2. New blogs on the Australian Blogs Community

Design Sojourn | writings on Industrial Design + Entrepreneurship
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Keyword Elite | Keyword PPC Campaign Software
Bare Bones Gardening
Animal Art: Pet Portraits and Wildlife Art by Michelle Wrighton
Art by Michelle
SLOz: Australia’s Second Life News Source
Life in Black and White
Kelly Marie Letting Loose
Alyndabear

Reminder: Anybody who would like to add (or update) the Aussie blogs from Bumpzee to their blogroll can find an A to Z list and a downunder version (Z to A). Snoskred keeps these updated weekly.

We now have 141 members, 163 blogs, 8223 entries and some really great discussion. Is your blog there?

3. Other News

In case you haven’t heard the news, there’s an Australian blogging conference being held in Brisbane on Friday 28th September. Peter Black writes:

…the Australian Blogging Conference will be held in Brisbane at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The Conference will be hosted by the QUT Faculty of Law and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (CCI).

This will not be a conference in the traditional sense. It will be relatively informal. Instead of lengthy presentations, people will be invited lead discussions on various topics throughout the day – some practical, such as how to build a better blog, and some theoretical on the role, influence and future of blogs.

Please see BlogOz for more information. There are lots of really interesting sessions – good luck deciding which ones you’ll have to do without.

4. From the Aussosphere

He’s baaack. Anthony Dever has re-fired up the The Local, and today lists the latest 413 blogs added to his Australian blog search (now tracking over 2,500 blogs). He is also indicating that next week he’ll have an Australian Bloggers Directory (including an RSS feed for new blogs) up and running. Great stuff for the Aussosphere! Have you submitted your blog?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Andrew Boyd kindly interviewed me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurel cracked me up – see her invitation to be a BigPond® Pilot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ross Dawson discussed the business model for blogging and points to this article in the Australian about Allure Media – the team behind localised blogs such as Gizmodo, Defamer, LifeHacker and Kotaku.

It seems Netus (which is predominantly owned by News Limited) has funded 92.5% of Allure Media.

As to MSM trends:

Internationally, the mainstream media is taking a financial interest in the independent blogging community.

Mainstream publishers are also beginning to buy in the best blogging talent. High-profile political blogger Tim Blair is now the opinion editor at the Telegraph, while left-wing blogger Tim Dunlop writes Blogocracy for the website.

The Australian article also lists the top 10 Australian Media Blogs, citing Gnoos as the source.

Just a short update this week.

16 responses so far

16 Responses to “Weekly Update 30th August”

  1. # Snoskredon 31 Aug 2007 at 2:02 pm

    The list has been updated 😉

    Interesting thoughts on the rankings – I should shoot up that list when my PR is updated. Or I should say if, because it seems like it’s never going to happen! ;(

    Back to the packing!

    Snoskred
    http://www.snoskred.org/

  2. # Megon 31 Aug 2007 at 2:08 pm

    Thanks Snos.

    Tell me about it! Trust me to move domains just when there is a record period in between PR Updates!

    Happy packing (oxymoron?)

  3. # Anthonyon 31 Aug 2007 at 3:46 pm

    I really think 2007 is the Year of the Australian Blog. Considerable number of great things are happening.

  4. # Rodon 31 Aug 2007 at 3:50 pm

    Glad you pointed out Laurels post, that’s pretty funny! I had to leave a comment for Laurel!

    Also interesting, is the articles you’ve pointed out about the commercial attraction to blogging. Looks like News ltd is heading towards total domination! Me worrys – is there going to be any room left in search engine indexes (or the web!) for sites that aren’t apart of the News ltd, News Corp, News Media etc etc network!!! At least he’s Aussie I suppose…

    Also, thanks again for the tip re RSS, there’s a link in the footer.

  5. # Megon 31 Aug 2007 at 4:04 pm

    Hey Anthony – welcome back :) As this is my inaugural year, I don’t feel adequately qualified to comment, but it’s certainly been Year of the Aussie Blog to me!

    Hi Rod – yep, she’s got a great sense of humour all right!

    Re the article – I knew you’d say that, which is why I didn’t need to 😉

    Cool – I see the links – just posted my overview …. finally!

  6. # Andrew Boydon 31 Aug 2007 at 5:08 pm

    Hi Meg,

    thanks for the link, it was my pleasure, you deserve the recognition for the work you’ve put in.

    Cheers, Andrew

  7. # dton 01 Sep 2007 at 10:31 am

    Hi

    Thanks for the plug and post. Please keep in touch!

  8. # Katieon 01 Sep 2007 at 3:26 pm

    I’ve noticed that about Ratified rank. Currently I’m 93 yet technically my ranking is about 50 points better than the current 89. I have no idea how that works, but there’s something not right, and I’m not sure if I want to display my ranking if it’s incorrect and therefore worse than it should be…

  9. # Megon 01 Sep 2007 at 4:17 pm

    Andrew & dt

    Thanks and you’re welcome.

    Katie – yes, I think it has to do with that blog having a PR of 4, though according to the formula it shouldn’t matter.

    By the way, your feed doesn’t appear to be coming via feed burner, so I doubt your subscriber stats would be right.

    There is a way you can redirect your feed to FB, if you’re interested. http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart

  10. # Katieon 01 Sep 2007 at 5:09 pm

    Hi, I emailed them, and we were adding the wrong T – we were adding the links, not the blogs! The “t” section goes by the amount of blogs that link to us. *doh* I don’t use feedburner as my default, and I wasn’t that fussed about it really – I only added the feedburner thing because of ratified, but I will check out that link, thanks :)

  11. # Megon 01 Sep 2007 at 5:15 pm

    D’oh – thanks Katie :) I’ll have to amend the post.

  12. # Megon 01 Sep 2007 at 5:29 pm

    Hmm – still doesn’t compute…

  13. # Katieon 01 Sep 2007 at 6:25 pm

    Oh no, it doesn’t, does it? lol This is difficult!

  14. # Janette Toralon 02 Sep 2007 at 9:20 am

    Hi Meg and Katie. Thanks for the heads-up. I’m contacting Andrew now about it. Cheers!

  15. # Megon 02 Sep 2007 at 10:03 am

    Thanks Janette!

  16. # Janette Toralon 02 Sep 2007 at 8:15 pm

    Hi Meg. This is now corrected. Thanks again for the help on this. Cheers!