According to Blogstreet, this blog has a “rank” of 437 out of the 103,159 blogs on its list and a BIQ, or “blog influence quotient,” of 164 (something to do with how many “top ranking” blogs link to you). [I saw “BIQ” and thought it was something about brains, another manifestation of a common American fallacy, that of equating intelligence with popularity. Some crowds are wise, but are all?]
I don’t know what any of this Blogstreet stuff means, and I suspect that I’m not going to try to figure it out: one could spend far too much time navel gazing about what is, for me, part hobby and part soapbox, and surprisingly little connected to my academic pursuits. (If we had drinks, it perhaps it could be the virtual pub.)
Naturally, not everyone approaches the medium in the same way. I went to a conference a few months ago and met a guy who introduced himself to people there as a blogger, even though he had a real job at a nice university, which struck me as a more salient fact. (Then again, his blog is indeed highly ranked. But so is his university.) I thought that was a little odd. Later, I did him a very tiny favor and he said “just for that, I’ll link to you” as if it were a big deal; that seemed a bit odd too. And then, of course, he didn’t…
