About the Metalog

Posted 2006-03-19

Almost a decade ago this page recorded the most popular links posted by weblogs on the web; a related page listed the most popular weblogs. I only did this for about a year or so (by the end of it, updates were coming in too fast for me to process by hand, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to rejig things), but I still do have some of the data!

Most-linked Blogs in September 2000

  1. robotwisdom.com/ (44 links)
  2. kottke.org/ (42)
  3. slashdot.org/ (40)
  4. www.metafilter.com/ (39)
  5. memepool.com/ (37)
  6. obscurestore.com/ (35)
  7. camworld.com/ (35)
  8. www.misterpants.com/01/ (28)
  9. www.evhead.com/ (27)
  10. www.harrumph.com/ (26)
  11. www.stormwerks.com/linked/ (25)
  12. www.megnut.com/ (23)
  13. members.tripod.com/amused_2/weblog.html (23)
  14. eatonweb.com/ (22) — defunct
  15. electrobacon.com/apathy/ (22) — defunct
  16. www.swallowingtacks.com/ (21) — defunct
  17. www.rebeccablood.net/ (19)
  18. www.plasticbag.org/ (19)
  19. genehack.org/ (18)
  20. www.scripting.com/ (18)
  21. www.uncorked.org/medley/ (18)
  22. www.pocketgeek.com/pith/ (17)
  23. students.washington.edu/lwinn/bird/ (17) — defunct
  24. peterme.com/ (17)
  25. 50cups.com/strange/ (16) — defunct
  26. www.wrongwaygoback.com/ (16) — defunct
  27. www.wwa.com/~dhartung/weblog/ (15) — moved
  28. www.bradlands.com/ (14)
  29. catless.ncl.ac.uk/Lindsay/weblog/latest.html (14)
  30. cybereditions.com/aldaily/ (14)
  31. gooddeed.net/blog/ (14) — defunct
  32. www.xplane.com/xblog/ (14)
  33. www.linkwatcher.com/metalog/ (14) — defunct
  34. www.zeldman.com/coming.html (13) — moved
  35. www.popculturejunkmail.com/ (13)
  36. q.queso.com/ (13)
  37. prolific.org/ (13)
  38. www.tomalak.org/ (12) — defunct
  39. www.gumbopages.com/looka/ (12)
  40. wmf.editthispage.com/ (12)
  41. www.larkfarm.com/weblog.asp (12)
  42. www.cardhouse.com/links/weblog.htm (12)
  43. saturn.org/ (11) — defunct
  44. www.alt0169.com/ (11) — defunct
  45. www.flutterby.com/ (11)
  46. stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/ethel/blogger.html (10)
  47. www.kitschbitch.com/ (10) — defunct
  48. www.geegaw.com/ (10)
  49. rc3.org/ (10)
  50. dack.com/ (10)

Some observations/notes:

If you haven’t already seen it, Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker piece, “You’ve Got Blog,” captures the spirit of the blogs of the time, via the story of Kottke and Megnut’s blog-initiated relationship. (You can tell it’s old because it talks about “E-mail” and ICQ.)

metalog-data.json contains the raw data (in JSON format); metalog-sources.txt contains the weblogs I was working from (446 of them). I can also provide the data on the URLs these weblogs linked to, though I don’t think this is so interesting.

The Wayback Machine has some copies of what these pages looked like at different times: metalog, metalog ratings.

gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.