Over the next few weeks, we will be comparing Technorati 100 rank to Alexa three-month rank for the blogs in the Technorati 100. Essentially, Technorati tracks links and Alexa tracks traffic. To help show the relationship, we are creating interactive chart pages to accompany each blog post. The chart pages include live rollovers describing each point in the chart and a summary table.

For instance, the live chart for this post is available for you to explore.

Business and Finance blogs show a fairly linear relationship when comparing Alexa and Technorati 100 ranks.

Why does Creating Passionate Users receive relatively less traffic (according to Alexa) than links (acccording to Technorati)? Perhaps the posts spark linkage or off-shoot posts but don't drive traffic back to the original?

ShoeMoney is in the opposite situation: why does it have so much traffic but relatively fewer links? The blog describes itself as a "diary", so it's possible that users read the blog, but aren't inspired to write their own posts or link; they just enjoy reading what Jeremy Schoemaker has to say.

Are there any other reasons for these outliers? Take a look at the full chart to draw your own conclusions.

And let us know how you like the charts!

The prestigious and long-running DEMO conference ran earlier this week. We looked at blogs for TechCrunch40 companies last week; here's a similar report for DEMO.

Question: does DEMO organize the companies into categories? If so, we missed it. (If not, then ... advantage: TechCrunch40.)

(As always, kudos to the Blogcosm team for research and scripting.)

Did we miss any blogs? Do you have links to personal blogs of any of the founders or employees?

According to a profile in yesterday's USA Today, The Huffington Post has raised a total of $10 million of venture capital.

As we noted previously, entrepreneur Alan Warms was skeptical whether the VCs would get a good return on the earlier $5 million. (See the post for hard numbers that mesh well with other sources we dug up.) Looks like it just got twice as hard.

What's their trick? Well, it's hard to ignore this tidbit from the end of the article:

As the Huffington Post looks to its own future, co-founder Lerer says it has no plans to begin paying bloggers. Ever.

"That's not our financial model," he says. "We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company."

Hmm.... If the distinctly left-wing Huffington Post were reporting that information about a "corporate media site", would they call it exploitation of labor? We report, you decide.

P.S. More data from the article; "The staff has grown from three to 43 full-time employees. And Huffington's list of bloggers has grown to 1,800." (The editors and reporters get paid, just not the bloggers.)

P.P.S. From a commenter on Mashable's coverage:

Ignoring the "small" detail of having 43 FT employees and the $10M in funding, I don't think The Huffington Post is a blog anymore. I mean, look at it. The thing is more crowded than AOL's home page!!

Hat tips: Rafat Ali at paidContent.org, Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider and of course TechMeme.

On Sunday, tech journalist Scott Kirsner's Innovation Economy column (and video) in The Boston Globe looked at blogging by VCs: In venture capitalism, a growing rift over blogs. (In case that doesn't evoke enough tension, the HTML page title is even more pointed: A digital divide: VC's embrace, decry use of blogging.) His thesis:

Some firms blog, and some don't .... an important shift in the way VC firms interact with entrepreneurs.

In favor: Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

[Blogging is] a huge benefit to our business. Of course it brings incremental deal flow, but it also filters the deal flow and makes it more targeted and more relevant

Its also a great way to bring needed attention to the companies we invest in

And its a way to do research on new sectors and learn about other companies that compete with our companies

Also in favor: Jeffrey Bussgang of IDG Ventures.

- Definitely less about deal flow and more about transparency and providing accessibility, humanizing the VC process

- Open dialog helps me keep in touch with entrepreneur’s latest issues and hot buttons

- Provides sense of accountability to the entrepreneur community

- Helps me understand social networking, community, blogging, and many other Web 2.0 phenomenon from a practical standpoint as a practioner, not theoretical

(As is common with "old media", the article chops and paraphrases the quotes. The above come from the companion post on Kirsner's Innovation Economy blog. Kudos for providing the full original, and shame on any journalist who doesn't. Also worth noting, a more straightforward title: Why VCs Do (or Don't) Blog.)

Against: Jeff Fagnan of Atlas Venture

It takes a lot of time. We choose to dedicate that time to other outreach and marketing efforts.

Also against: Woody Benson of Prism VentureWorks

Our goal is to share [our experience and intellectual property] in the confines of the meetings that we have with our portfolio companies and potential portfolio companies.

A quick roundup of reactions:

Fred Wilson replies on his blog ("A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC):

That, to me, is the defining argument for and against blogging. There are those who think the best way to manage your "intellectual property" is to hoard it for yourself. There are others who think that intellectual property should be shared, developed out in the open, and that it will grow exponentially. I am in the latter camp.

Mike Feinstein (who appears at the end of the video) takes the middle ground ("The Fein Line: Thoughts about VC, start-ups, sports, politics, and the world in general")

Blogging doesn't necessarily give you an advantage over those who don't.  But, if you don't blog, you need to figure out what other means you will use to stay connected to the Web community.

Bijan Sabet (see the video for a 2 minute interview) of Spark Capital tells the world Why I blog?

First and foremost, I don't consider myself a "VC blogger". I don't talk about venture capital/business exclusively. Or even most of the time. Those that read/interact with this blog know that. This blog is about me. All of me - work, personal, family, everything.

My blog is about getting my thoughts, observations & interests down on digital ink. But this blog is also about the feedback from you all. The conversation is a big reason why I keep blogging.

Jeff Bussgang ("Seeing Both Sides: VC Perspectives From A Former Entrepreneur") noted that Scott Kirsner Stirs The Pot:

Scott Kirsner is always good for a little controversy.

No word yet from David Beisel of Venrock ("Genuine VC: David Beisel's Perspective on Digital Change"), though he made an indirect appearance as the organizer of the Web Innovators Group (WebInno) event where several of the video interviews took place.

Or from Jim Savage, who is one of several bloggers at the Longworth Venture Partners Blog.

Also on the list of Boston area VC bloggers (in the article or on Kirsner's blog):

• David Aronoff of IDG Ventures: Diary of a GeekVC
• Mike Hirshland of Polaris Venture Partners: VCMike
• Vinit Nijhawan of Key Venture Partners: Serial Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist "A discussion of venture capital, entrepreneurship and innovation with particular focus on US, India and China."
• Simeon Simeonov of Polaris Venture Partners: HighContrast "Innovation & venture capital in the post-broadband era"

An aside: mainstream media Web sites could learn a thing or two about Web navigation from blogs. For example, neither the column title nor Scott Kirsner's name is a link. Granted the Columnists link isn't too far away -- but when I follow the link from that page to his column, I get a registration wall. Er, no thanks.

While I'm at it, here's one more reason I read blogs over MSM articles: splitting an article across two pages just to double the number of ad impressions is very annoying. Enough already. The short-term boost may seem like easy money, but I'll bet it's a losing strategy in the long run.

Two weeks ago I attended the latest event of the Boston Web Innovators Group. It was well worth the time. 3 "main dish" presentations, 6 "side dish" demo tables, and plenty of time to network with roughly 400 interesting people. If you're in the Boston area, look for me at the next "WebInno" event on Nov. 6. One of the people I met suggested that I check out SezWho.

Let's start with the pitch:

SezWho is a distributed context, rating and reputation service for blogs, forums, wikis and other sites that deal with user generated content.

And:

SezWho is a social-media service that enables site owners to increase engagement with their community and to drive traffic by cross-connecting islands of content based on community participants.

The download page lists plug-ins for Wordpress and Movable Type, with other platforms "coming soon". Once installed by a blog owner, each comment gets several new features:

• a visual rating (5 red boxes, filled-in with what appears to be half-point increments)

• a pop-up profile for each commenter that shows a list of recent comments

• a question for readers: "Was this comment useful to you?"

There's only Yes or No; the numerical rating is determined by a SezWho algorithm. To answer the question, readers must first supply their email address. (Some will object, but I think it's a reasonable step to help reduce gaming of the system.)

A tip for SezWho: I find the current format busy and distracting -- though that should be easy to fix. (And a gripe: make unique title tags for different pages on the site!)

Here are write-ups from blogs that have deployed SezWho:

• Read/WriteWeb's New Comments Feature: SezWho (July 22, 2007) ... note that SezWho founder Jitendra Gupta is an occasional guest blogger at Read/WriteWeb

• VentureBeat: SezWho lets you have say on blog commenters (June 25, 2007)

• sramana mitra (a serial entrepreneur): A Service for Active Netizens (July 19, 2007)

• ifacethoughts: The CommentPower (SezWho) Solution (April 24, 2007)

Chuq Von Rospach has many years experience with online community, so his initial enthusiasm is worth a look ... though he hasn't adopted the system yet.

Several other companies are tackling comments from different directions, e.g.

BigSwerve (which was in the TechCrunch40 DemoPit)

BigSwerve's crawler aggregates comments to discover the underlying social network that is created as a result of this implicit behavior and provides a view into the conversation. Users can follow the comments for a given person and discover new content by seeing where other people are engaged.

coComment (the market leader?)

coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you're following in one convenient place, and informs you whenever something is added to a conversation.

With the browser extension, comments are automatically collected, no need to remember where you commented, coComment does it for you.

Co.mments

Use co.mments to bookmark posts you want to follow. It tracks new comments for you, so you don't miss out. You can see all the new comments from your tracking page, or subscribe to the feed.

Disqus

Disqus is about enhancing online discussion. We are starting with a better comment system for your blog, backed and synced with your own dedicated forum.

Track replies to your comments, follow others' posts, and claim your identity across websites.

Intense Debate

We provide a substitute to your current blog comment system that is feature packed!

In the comments to a post on Web Worker Daily, Jitendra contrasted his service with coComment:

The main difference is that SezWho drives the traffic related to comments to the site where as CoComment provides the service for commenters by consolidating all the comments in one place…As such SezWho sells to Site owners where as coComments sells to commenters by mostly providing the service via a browser tool bar…

Comment management is long overdue for innovation. In a nice roundup post, VC Brad Feld called comments The Dark Matter of the Blogosphere (July 21, 2007) with links to Joel Spolsky, Dave Winer and Fred Wilson. Check them out.

Which "comment management" products and services do you like?

On Tuesday, Rand Fishkin announced that SEOmoz was in the final stages of raising $1.25 million. SEOmoz isn't a blog per se, but their blog raises the company's visibility and the lively comment section both builds and reflects a real community. Although the blog is not one of the SEO-related blogs in the Technorati top 100 (measured by incoming links), Rand Fishkin ("randfish") did make #44 on NxE's list of fifty most influential bloggers.

Back in February, the company updated their site and added premium content:

• information: The Illustrated Guide to Building a Search-Friendly Website, The Professional's Keyword Research Guide, The Professional's Guide to Link Building
• tools: Rank Checker, Crawl Test, Term Targeting, Keyword Difficulty, Page Strength, Juicy Link Finder
• support: ask questions, access the Link Directory

The about page still talks about "consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services" but:

Right now ... we're concentrating more on growing premium content, so we're not accepting new clients, but still working with folks like NPR, Yelp, AllBusiness, Answers, etc. (source, emphasis added)

As of August, the new business was adding about $40,000 per month (my estimate based on membership of $399/year):

In the 6 months since launch, we've had approximately 1800 people sign up for our premium membership, of which ~1200 are members today (looking at our subscriber details, it appears that many folks will sign up for one month, cancel, then sign up again 3-4 months later). (source)

But perhaps not as profitable as one might expect:

Salaries are our biggest expense, but server hardware isn't insignificant either. That, combined with travel expenses (to help promote all this stuff) will probably make it so at the end of the year, we'll be looking at around 850K in revenue and 100K in profit, which, while not insignificant, certainly isn't incredible. (source)

Rand is known for being very open about the company. Back in December, he posted estimated financials for 2006:

Here's my quick summary of income & expenses from their longer list (combining categories, omitting smaller items and rounding off to emphasize that they are just estimates):

Worth noting: Rand was only paid $38,000 in 2006, and $26,000 in 2005. It's pretty clear his priority was to grow the company.

That's also the main rationale for raising money:

We literally have a hundred different ideas for tools, search analytics, tracking, guides, resources and more and we're in a position to recruit help from the best and brightest the industry has to offer... but, we can't do it alone.

In addition to recruiting, they're concerned about retention:

with our staff getting competing job offers every other day, we need to make sure that we can compensate our team at market rates (we've been playing the scrimp and save game a long time)

And getting paid (something I wholeheartedly endorse!):

Gillian and I will start to take home real salaries, rather than taking pride in our positions as SEOmoz's two worst-paid employees :)

Rand is also ready to accept the end game:

One final note on the outside investment - when we decided to accept this money, we took a step in a direction that will probably end with the sale of SEOmoz (as we're most likely not a target to go public). I think that this is one of the other big fears that members and commenters had - and I can completely empathize. However, I will say this - I'm in this for the long haul, and even though SEOmoz may, in 4-7 years, be part of another company, I'm going to do my damndest to make sure that all the great things about us get preserved.

The (pending) investment comes from VC firm Ignition Partners and Curious Office:

Ignition was founded by a group of former execs from Microsoft and McCaw.

Michelle [Goldberg] is a principal at Ignition, investing in enterprise and consumer software and services. ... Prior to joining Ignition Michelle worked as an independent consultant at Microsoft where she developed the initial business plans for products in the enterprise server space. Michelle was an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners where she specialized in mid-market mergers and acquisitions.  ... Michelle earned her B.A. degree from Columbia, and an M.A. degree from Harvard University.

Curious Office [is] a new kind of "micro-venture lab".... If you are looking for seed stage or Series A financing or you just want more development, design and executive support for your own venture then there is a very good chance that we could be a good partner for you.

An aside: I omitted a link to the SEOmoz premium content pitch. Rather than a clear, well-organized explanation of features and benefits, it strikes me as exactly the sort of long annoying sales letter that is used to hawk wares of dubious value. I suppose that approach must work with a certain audience, but I wonder if it's something that the company and larger SEOmoz community is proud of. Perhaps they just see it differently, or shrug it off as no big deal.

I know of a few other blogs that have raised money, and several more that are growing based on internal revenue. If you've seen any that provide such a detailed window into their thinking and the numbers that drive it, please let us know!

Michael Arrington has become an influential voice in the world of Web startups. (We covered their TechCrunch40 conference yesterday.) TechCrunch started as a hobby blog and is now the flagship site of a growing media company, with 5 full-time and 16 part-time employees. (source: USA Today) Or perhaps 6: Erick Schonfeld just joined from Business 2.0 magazine (including their popular group blog: Next Net). Also blogging at TechCrunch: Duncan Riley (#24 on NxE's list of fifty most influential bloggers). TechCrunch CEO is Heather Harde, previously the SVP of Mergers and Acquisitions at Fox Interactive Media.

Whether by luck or design, Mashable's focus on social networking proved a good choice. Founder Pete Cashmore hails from London.

Read/WriteWeb comes from New Zealand, founded by Richard MacManus. Regular contributers include Josh Catone, Alex Iskold, and Emre Sokullu. Marshall Kirkpatrick joined the team last week. The site also lists 7 occasional contributers.

Tim O'Reilly is an icon of the computer book publishing industry, a key mover behind the open source movement, and has his finger on the pulse of the Web. He and members of the community share their views at O'Reilly Radar.

Om Malik is a professional journalist turned blogger, and a great source of scoops and inside info. With the succes of GigaOM, he raised money and launched several other blogs: Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, Earth2Tech, and FoundRead. The blogging team includes Katie Fehrenbacher, Liz Gannes, Jackson West, Wagner James Au, Anne Zelenka, and 8 contributors.

Robert Scoble parlayed his initial blogging experience into becoming what many regarded as the blogging face of Microsoft. He left to become a videoblogger at PodTech.net, where he interviews "geeks, technologist & developers". His personal blog remains popular, including an active comment section.

Founded by 22-year old college student Neil Patel, Pronet Advertising is a group blog from ACS, with posts by (among others?) David Chen, Jay Cross, Ryan Fujiu, Cameron Olthuis, Muhammad Saleem, and MG Siegler. The blog doesn't talk specifically about SEO though is no doubt informed by their SEO work.

Download Squad is yet another blog from AOL's Weblogs Inc. (WIN). It currently lists 2 bloggers who posted more than 100 times each in the past 30 days: Brad Linder and Chris Gilmer. Rounding out the list with at least 6 posts: Ted Wallingford, Lisa Hoover, Emily Price, Jason Clarke, Dolores Parker, and Peter White. Like most of the WIN blogs, their "About" page is nowhere to be found.

On Monday & Tuesday, the TechCrunch40 conference (co-hosted by Jason Calacanis) put the spotlight on 40 startups. Conferences that feature presentations from hot startups are old hat in the computer industry. One aspect that's not widely known: some of them charge each startup a hefty fee to appear on stage. (Jason says $10,000-$20,000. If anyone has links that show the fee for a specific conference, please include in a comment.) The TechCrunch40 charged $2,500 to attend but no additional fee to present.

Here's the Blogcosm angle: a look at which of the presenting companies have blogs.

By our count: 21 out of 40. Did we miss any? Do you have links to personal blogs of any of the founders or employees?

The Technorati 100 (as of Aug. 1) contains 10 blogs written in a language other than English. 4 in Japanese, 2 in Russian, 1 each in Chinese, German, Persian and Spanish. (It's worth noting that some of the top English-language blogs come from countries where English is not one of the primary or official languages.)

A note to our bilingual and multilingual readers: I apologize that we don't have the resources to provide more than superficial coverage of blogs in other languages.

We just finished a new Category section here at Blogcosm, providing a richer display of information that we've included since launch. Each blog is assigned to at least one sub-category. The sub-categories are arranged in a multi-level hierarchy, with 8 top-level categories. (Plus Non-English, where we don't have the language skills or resources to add value.)

• Arts & Humanities
• Business & Finance
• Computers & Internet
• Entertainment
• News & Politics
• Recreation & Sports
• Shopping
• Society & Culture

The main category page shows "Top Blogs in All Categories" with a Table of Contents at the top.

Data visualization feature: the horizontal bar chart show the relative "weight" of each category at a glance (based here on the number of blogs in each category).

A note to skeptics: we're the first to agree that no category hierarchy is perfect, and that a "flat" folksonomy of tags (as popularized by Flickr and many other Web 2.0 apps) also has many advantages. However, categorization and consistent use of terms have proven to be powerful methods of organizing -- and understanding -- large data sets. In fact, there are several good ways to combine the benefits of a formal ontology (classification scheme) with the unstructured use of tags. Stay tuned for real examples!

Each category has several sub-categories. In some cases we list alternate sub-categories (in gray) where a single hierarchy wasn't clear.

Click any category name to drill in; the detail page includes a description of each blog, alternate categories (if any) and a direct link to the blog.

The top-level categories appear in a sidebar throughout the site to easily focus on specific interests.

We tried to have some fun with the color coding, e.g. Business & Finance is green (making money), Shopping is red (spending money), and News & Politics is purple (with apologies to our international readers, it's a color combination of "Blue State" Democrats and "Red State" Republicans, and implicit recognition that roughly a third of eligible voters in the US are actually independent).

Data visualization feature: the category background color provides an additional cue for locating topics of interest.

Elsewhere on the site: the blog profiles now include a comment form. Please add relevant details and links for blogs you're familiar with! Category suggestions and corrections are also welcome.

For Web entrepreneurs, it's helpful to understand the economics of a blog or related media business. Last August, BuzzTracker's Alan Warms (posting on Fred Wilson's "A VC" blog as "al from chicago") ran some numbers to suggest that The Huffington Post's decision to raise $5 million was a risky bet. Here they are in table form, plus some notes:

Read his entire comment (August 9, 2006) for additional details, plus 2 earlier comments: July 23 and July 29.

*Unless I'm missing something, a 10x return requires a target acquision price (or IPO value) of $150 million, hence 1.5x the above page views.

*RPM ("Revenue Per Mille" using the Latin word for "thousand") = average revenue per thousand page views. Display ads are usually sold at a CPM rate ("cost per thousand"), and PPC (pay per click) ads are often reported using the equivalent CPM. RPM takes two important factors into account. Some pages on a site may do quite well, with multiple ads per page. Others will have few ads or only low-revenue ads ("remnant inventory").

Alan points out several challenges:

• it's difficult to get that many page views
• $15 RPM is high for politics (i.e. he was intentionally using a generous estimate)
• it's difficult to sell every page view

I'll add one more: even a $20M/yr business is on the low end for VC investment. For example, Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners presented a more typical goal of $50M (minimum) in an informative post from February: Three ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue. (The post should have been called "3 scenarios that show how difficult it is to build a media site to $50 million".) Jeremy pegged general interest sites (including news) at $1 RPM, and sites with demographic targeting at $5 RPM -- which would require 3-15x more traffic than in Alan's quick estimate.

So, you can see why Alan bootstrapped the company and was happy to join Yahoo rather than fight for page views in a standalone company. And, "why more entrepreneurs are going for low-investment sites that don't need an exit but provide 'lifestyle businesses' for their owners." (source: Tim O'Reilly; see below)

Of course that's not the last word on the subject. In March, Tim O'Reilly added some context with a look at The Economics of Online Advertising

The other option, implicit in Chris Anderson's long tail hypothesis, but not mentioned by Jeremy, is that you aggregate a lot of other sites. There are different models for this: Gawker and Weblogsinc launched multiple sites, publishing blogs like they were books, with some expected to succeed and others to fail; FM Publishing (in which I am an investor) doesn't aggregate ownership, but provides marketing services to an aggregate of clients.

And, we've come across a few blogs that have raised much less than $5 million.

If you've seen similar estimates, case studies or relevant data (e.g. RPM for specific sites), please add a comment.

When you're interested in the latest news, where do you go first? For an increasing number of blog-savvy folks, the answer is a "meme tracker" such as market leader Techmeme. A key advantage: putting blogs on more-or-less equal footing with the mainstream media (MSM), which provides for a broader range of views and the opportunity for additional depth.

Yahoo must have noticed the trend, acquiring BuzzTracker in an effort to improve Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com).

While Yahoo did not disclose the price it paid for BuzzTracker, sources close to the company said it bought the site–which is wholly owned by Chicago-based Participate Media–for about $5 million.

The decision to sell the business and move to Yahoo! was relatively simple. As anyone playing in the online space understands, online media is all about scale. The ability to garner real CPMs, the ability to sell ads directly, the ability to provide innovative solutions to advertisers, all depend on having tens of millions of unique visitors.

Why BuzzTracker rather than Techmeme (and companion sites memeorandum, WeSmirch & Ballbug), Megite or TailRank. Some bloggers also mentioned Sphere as a candidate. (The site started as a blog search engine and has added limited meme tracking features.)

It's not about traffic.

(Granting that Alexa is far from perfect, comparisons between similar sites can be quite useful.)

Several bloggers have weighed in:

I have to confess that while I have heard of Buzztracker, it seems like a distant also-ran in the meme-tracker game. I check Techmeme.com religiously because it is by far the best (most timely, least spam-filled, most efficient at finding new blog posts that are on topic, etc.), and also check Tailrank and Sphere from time to time, but have never paid much attention to Buzztracker. And I don't think I'm alone in those habits.

like a Techmeme for thousands of topics

if their intention is to add a Google News type aggregation and reading system to the uber-popular Yahoo News service, then perhaps a small investment in BuzzTracker's talent is worth it.

The name is also quite brandable, especially for Yahoo, which already has the Yahoo Buzz Index, and its 10 years of search trend measurement.

Beas: "I dont understand this purchase unless its just the way chosen to hire their CEO."

threz: "Seems obvious to me that the purchase is to get the people (person?) not the website over to Yahoo. Much like most of google's acquisitions."

I've known Alan for years, but we got reacquainted at the All Things D conference in May. I realized then that we share the same vision for news – providing the best news content possible, whether traditional or citizen journalism, to a mainstream audience while making the technology invisible. He's a serial entrepreneur with a history of developing new media technologies, but his mantra is "Does it pass the Mom test?" Alan has both fantastic editorial judgment and a strong business sense – a boon to both our users and advertisers.

A few other tidbits from around the blogosphere:

The price is lower than the $7 million that Fox paid for NewRoo, a similar service, in 2006.

So it looks like with adding the automatic aggregation capabilities of BuzzTracker, Yahoo news will expand from beyond a directory/human-driven news aggregation site. This will also move it into Google News and Digg territory, while Google is trying to move into the human-editorial side with the AP/AFP/PA deal announced last month.

The software is also being used as a white-label on other sites such as TVWeek.com.

Patricipate (sic) Media runs also runs Rumormill and powers the Real Clear Politics BuzzTracker located here on FoxNews.com.

Participate has said on its Web site that it will soon include user-review and discussion sites to layer over the aggregation at BuzzTracker, much like what happens on the popular Digg service.

This morning I decided to test how good BuzzTracker news results were with a music group I've been following lately with interest compared against Google News for the same query. ... Buzztracker too fat, less filling ... Google News, leaner, meaner, fresher

Yesterday, a blog called NorthxEast posted their list of 50 "movers and shakers" in the blogging world. (52 when counting 2 teams.) It struck a chord, with 618 623 diggs at the moment (and still rising). I thought it would be useful to organize the list by category (and make some corrections and additions).

(Read the whole post for more background on each person.)

Naturally one can quibble with specific categories; suggestions welcome!

Searching remains one of the most common activities on the Web, and Google has by far the largest market share. That's clearly reflected in the list of search-related blogs in the Technorati 100, with one official Google blog, one by a prominent Google employee, and 2 more that cover Google (one by Philipp Lenssen & Tony Ruscoe, another by Ionut Alex Chitu). There's also one general blog, Search Engine Land (led by Danny Sullivan).

Some of the earliest blogs and 'zines were by and for developers.

A List Apart ("ALA") was started by Jeffrey Zeldman and Brian M. Platz in 1997 as a mailing list, with a Web site in 1998. Now on version 4.0, the ALA crew includes Erin Kissane, Jason Santa Maria, Dan Benjamin, Eric A. Meyer, Kevin Cornell, Krista Stevens, Erin Lynch, Andrew Fernandez, Aaron Gustafson, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Daniel Mall, Ethan Marcotte, and L. Jeffrey Zeldman.

MozillaZine was also created in 1998. It currently hosts 29 individual blogs and 5 team blogs -- with links to over 30 more.

Joel Spolsky launched his popular blog in 2000. He started his career at Microsoft, eventually founding Fog Creek Software (also in 2000).

Coding Horror is a more recent effort from the other coast, "published continuously since 2004" by an experienced Windows software developer.

The WordPress development blog gives the latest updates on the popular open source blogging platform (by Matthew Mullenweg and a host of contributors).

WordPress comes up again on the Technorati 100, with an old link to a popular template.

OK, here's one answer to yesterday's question: the 37 Signals blog is an important part of the company's identity and reputation. Their blog and products both reflect and promote the company's focus: keep it simple. Another item for the mix: the popular Ruby on Rails Web development framework grew out of their first product.

Smashing Magazine packs in long lists of information, with posts such as 80 AJAX Solutions, 80 Professional Typefaces, 70 Expert CSS Ideas, 50 Beautiful Web-Designs, 35 Designers x 5 Questions, 20 Free Icon Sets, and 200+ Hotkeys. It's an international success story, maintained by Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman.

By coincidence, Smashing Magazine covered a 37signals product last week.

Several blogs in the Technorati 100 cover news for a specific aspect of technology (whether games or gadgets); here are two that take a broader view.

Ars Technica covers Business IT, Apple, Gaming, Hardware, Gear & Gadgets, Law & Disorder. The site is organized into several sections: News, Articles, Guides, Journals, Forum, and 2 shops. Journals include: Infinite Loop (Apple), Opposable Thumbs (games and toys), One Microsoft Way, Nobel Intent (science) plus 8 staff journals. In August, 11 writers published at least 28 items each; 9 more at least 10 items each: Jacqui Cheng, Ben Kuchera, Frank Caron, Ryan Paul, Nate Anderson, Eric Bangeman, Justin Berka, Todd Haselton, John Timmer, Joel Hruska, Ken Fisher, Jeff Smykil, Jeremy Reimer, Chris Lee, Jon Stokes, Jonathan M Gitlin, Erik Kennedy, Matt Mondok, Johnathan Neuls, and Charles Jade.

Techdirt (the blog) provides wide ranging news & commentary by analysts for Techdirt (the company). From a business standpoint, the information they give away is a "loss leader" to promote their corporate intelligence and other services.

Yesterday the gadget blogs were out in force, covering every detail of Apple's latest iPod updates. (Dare I say it: the iPod Touch is as much "internet tablet" as "music player".)

Gadget blogs are another category where Weblogs Inc. (WIN) and Gawker take the top 2 slots. Engadget was co-founded by Peter Rojas (who remains Editorial Director). From the editor-in-chief on down, the site lists Ryan Block, Evan Blass, Thomas Ricker, Paul Miller, Chris Ziegler plus 23 more names. (Titles include: contributing editor, special correspondent, podcast producer, senior columnist, columnist, intern and copy editor.) Spinoffs include Engadget Mobile, Engadget HD plus sites in Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.

Gizmodo was also co-founded by Peter Rojas, who was later recruited away by Jason Calacanis. They have no shortage of editors (and a columnist and intern): Brian Lam, Noah Robischon, Wilson Rothman, Jason Chen, Charlie White, Mark Wilson, Matt Buchanan, Jesus Diaz, Addy Dugdale, Adam Frucci, Brendan I. Koerner, Ben Longo. They're not afraid to turn their snark inward: (source: Gizmodo FAQ)

A blog is just a fancy name for website written by someone really full of themselves.

TechEBlog is written by ... they don't say. Well, if that's good enough for them, I guess that's good enough for us.

To the extent that cars are (expensive) toys, I thought it was appropriate to cover these categories together.

Gaming has 2 slots in the Technorati 100. Kotaku is a Gizmodo blog with 9 editors listed on the site: Brian Crecente, Brian Ashcraft, Michael McWhertor, Michael Fahey, Kim Phu, Luke Plunkett, Flynn De Marco, Maggie Greene, and Mark Wilson.

Joystiq comes from rival Weblogs Inc. (WIN).

Autoblog is also from Weblogs Inc. It currently lists 11 bloggers who posted more than 20 times each in the past 30 days: John Neff, Frank Filipponio, Alex Nunez, Damon Lavrinc, Chris Shunk, Dan Roth, Chris Tutor, Sam Abuelsamid, Jonathon Ramsey, Siddharth Raja, and Sebastian Blanco. Like most of the WIN blogs, they don't bother with an "about" page. Worth noting: a spinoff called AutoblogGreen.

Even with less than 10% of the computer market, Apple has always been a trendsetter. With the iPod and iTunes, they captured a dominant position of a new market. The iPhone has stirred up plenty of excitement (and sales), though the effect on the mobile phone industry is still uncertain. Two blogs in the Technorati 100 (and countless more beyond) cover the latest news and rumors.

TUAW is part of the Weblogs Inc. Network (WIN) that was purchased by AOL in 2005. The site currently lists 8 bloggers who posted more than a dozen times in the past 30 days: Mike Schramm, David Chartier, Scott McNulty, Erica Sadun, Dave Caolo, Mat Lu, Michael Rose, and Victor Agreda.

Arnold Kim founded MacRumors in February 2000. He recently started a personal blog called normalkid.

Here are several blogs that are especially difficult to categorize!

"Mark Frauenfelder, who co-founded the 'zine with wife, Carla Sinclair, has remained the driving force behind Boing Boing for nearly two decades, still regularly posting alongside the blog's three other regular editors, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin." (source: appscout.com) Each is a professional journalist. Advertising was added in 2004, with the help of John Battelle -- who went on to launch blog advertising network FM Publishing. A distinct gadgets blog was created last month.

Neatorama was founded in August 2005 by Alex Santoso. The site currently lists 16 additional authors. It includes content from mental_floss and Bathroom Reader.

MetaFilter (MeFi) was founded in July 1999 by Matthew Haughey ("mathowie"), whose other blogs include A Whole Lotta Nothing, PVRBlog and fortuitous. It's arguably more a community than a blog. Jessamyn West (a self-described anti-capitalist blogger at librarian.net) has been a moderator since 2005.

Jason Kottke has updated his blog "almost daily since March 1998". In 2005, he turned his blog into a full-time job, raising $39,900 from about 1450 micropatrons. He ended the experiment after a year, switching to a single sidebar ad.

Hosea "Ze" Frank is an internet phenomenon (sources):

"Humorist Ze Frank is 'thinking so you don't have to,' producing short, intense, funny videos capturing his wide-eyed, contorted face every weekday (apparently, he needs the weekends to catch up on his blinking)."

"Ze Frank's daily video blog looks simple enough... but what takes viewers a few minutes to watch, takes Frank nearly six hours to produce. Coming up with fresh material, he says, is a daily struggle."

"The site is chock full of funny videos, games, interactive toys, and various readings."