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
- robotwisdom.com/ (44 links)
- kottke.org/ (42)
- slashdot.org/ (40)
- www.metafilter.com/ (39)
- memepool.com/ (37)
- obscurestore.com/ (35)
- camworld.com/ (35)
- www.misterpants.com/01/ (28)
- www.evhead.com/ (27)
- www.harrumph.com/ (26)
- www.stormwerks.com/linked/ (25)
- www.megnut.com/ (23)
- members.tripod.com/amused_2/weblog.html (23)
- eatonweb.com/ (22) — defunct
- electrobacon.com/apathy/ (22) — defunct
- www.swallowingtacks.com/ (21) — defunct
- www.rebeccablood.net/ (19)
- www.plasticbag.org/ (19)
- genehack.org/ (18)
- www.scripting.com/ (18)
- www.uncorked.org/medley/ (18)
- www.pocketgeek.com/pith/ (17)
- students.washington.edu/lwinn/bird/ (17) — defunct
- peterme.com/ (17)
- 50cups.com/strange/ (16) — defunct
- www.wrongwaygoback.com/ (16) — defunct
- www.wwa.com/~dhartung/weblog/
(15) — moved
- www.bradlands.com/ (14)
- catless.ncl.ac.uk/Lindsay/weblog/latest.html (14)
- cybereditions.com/aldaily/ (14)
- gooddeed.net/blog/ (14) — defunct
- www.xplane.com/xblog/ (14)
- www.linkwatcher.com/metalog/ (14) — defunct
- www.zeldman.com/coming.html
(13) — moved
- www.popculturejunkmail.com/ (13)
- q.queso.com/ (13)
- prolific.org/ (13)
- www.tomalak.org/ (12) — defunct
- www.gumbopages.com/looka/ (12)
- wmf.editthispage.com/ (12)
- www.larkfarm.com/weblog.asp (12)
- www.cardhouse.com/links/weblog.htm (12)
- saturn.org/ (11) — defunct
- www.alt0169.com/ (11) — defunct
- www.flutterby.com/ (11)
- stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/ethel/blogger.html (10)
- www.kitschbitch.com/ (10) — defunct
- www.geegaw.com/ (10)
- rc3.org/ (10)
- dack.com/ (10)
Some observations/notes:
- The link counts seem really low, even when you take in to account
how long ago this was, and that blogs had to start somewhere, but
I’m pretty sure they really are broadly accurate. (The ranks
are almost certainly accurate.)
- Many of the blogs popular back then are still pretty popular today,
though not to the same extent: of the top 50, only Kottke, Metafilter and Scripting News make it onto
Technorati’s Top 100, for example. (I suspect Slashdot
would as well, but Technorati evidently doesn’t consider it a blog.)
- Curiously, Boing Boing
(Technorati’s No. 1 blog) doesn’t make it onto the list.
It did exist back then, and I have data for it, but
apparently it only had links from three sites. I’m not sure
when it started getting popular.
- There are no political blogs on the list—they hadn’t been
invented yet. Actually, I got the impression that many bloggers got a
bit shirty when political blogs started up, and started getting
popular—politics (and especially right-wing politics)
wasn’t what the blog-powered future was supposed to be about.
Blogs were supposed to be personal, thoughtful, witty, sincere—not
brash and combative.
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.