Nature, red in tooth and claw
When I signed up for the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem, I did it for the laughs. Likening the forms of life in the blogosphere to the Linnaean classification system and the Great Chain of Being (both which I had to learn about in some detail--and even, in the case of the former, laboriously memorize--way back when) gave me a chuckle.
But I'm not chuckling now (oh, well, maybe just a little bit). Because it turns out this is a heavy responsibility, and hard work not to slide back down the slippery slope.
Not that anyone cares but me, and I'm not sure how much even I care, but still--how often in life does one receive such a quantitative and seemingly objective rating of one's rank and station? I started out an Insignificant Microbe or Lowly Insect or whatever it was I started out as. But now, thanks to a few gracious links, for one brief shining moment I've crawled out of the primordial slime (at least partially) to reach the relatively exalted rank of Crawly Amphibian.
But I'd ascended before, only to fall. I hadn't realized when I signed up for that thing that you're only as good as your last weeks' stats. I had slithered up in the Truth Laid Bear world before, and yet it had taken only a week of slothfulness to ooze back down again to Lowly Insect.
It's a jungle out there.
posted by neo-neocon @ 12:49 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
It may be more than that. Somehow, after getting more links and boosting traffic by 50% the Bear managed to drop me 1300 blogs in the rankings. I've written three times in the past week to be removed from the system, which I consider fatally flawed, but have been ignored. I'm beginning to suspect shenanigans.
Remember that the blogs are all growing rapidly, so if you're not moving forward you'll definitely slip in the rankings. Also, post links will only count towards your rankings as long as they are on the front page of the blog linking you; once they move to the archives they don't count. This is why many people pay more attention to the traffic rankings than the link (i.e., ecosystem) rankings. I had 65 uniques a couple weeks ago (including an Instapundit link); now I'm down to about 43 because the posts that linked me have vanished into the archives.
Pat from Kerry Haters/Brainster's
Hey Neo-Neo! You're great and so is your blog! The scary thing is when I'm too lazy to post, I visit your site and read what I AM THINKING ABOUT...REALLY AMAZING! Visit me sometime and look at my post about Insignificant Microbes and/or Stop Feeding the Fish (Re: Ward Churchill). Maybe you even say it better but still, great minds work in great ways don't they? Signed, Your Evil (ok not so evil, just lazy and technically impaired) Twin living in Denver.
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