How to Find Local Vocal Yokels

Search Engine Watch reports that a new service from Blogdigger pinpoints bloggers by their physical location in the United States, with coverage soon to be extended to cities throughout the world. This fills one void in the marketplace, but we still need a really good resource that helps people identify the A, B and C-listers in different categories - e.g. travel, software, food and drink, etc.

Comments

[Jeremy Pepper]

As your friend (and my Syndicate roomie) Robert Scoble points out all the time, you know what A stands for, don't you?

So much for the egalitarian nature of blogs.

[Drew Olanoff]

"but we still need a really good resource that helps people identify the A, B and C-listers"

I have a problem with this line, and I have great respect for you Steve so please don't get me wrong.

Why do bloggers have to be in classes? Isn't that the same thing mainstream America and media does that we have all complained about until these new mediums came about?

Bloggers are bloggers.

[Denis de Bernardy]

@ Jeremy and Drew -- Because from a psychosociological stand point, a group always sprouts A people. Think 'lead goat'.

[Drew Olanoff]

I totally respect your opinion, but I think that a fun site like Blogebrity has planted a seed that can't be retracted. What makes people lead goats are other Bloggers. When bloggers decide not to follow someone, they'll stop. That's why blogging is great, we're not limited to NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX anymore.

[Denis de Bernardy]

Mm, I think you missed my point. It's just a simple statement of fact: Psychosociological research shows that any group... regardless of who, how, when, political or moral considerations... *any* group, including the most well educated one, will split into leaders and followers in an essentially natural manner.

[Drew Olanoff]

Right, but real leaders don't bring attention to the fact. Real leaders lead by example and leave it unspoken.

I respect the fact that we can agree to disagree :)

[Denis de Bernardy]

Mm... Actually, I would say that a real leader is the Machiavelo who has someone bring the attention to the fact that he did not bring the attention to the fact that he's the leader. ;)

[Greg Burton]

While I was a bit put off by the "A-List" etc comment, it goes deeper than that. I know of a couple dozen blogs in Albuquerque - none are listed on blogdigger local. Whoever manages to get listed first will be the defacto "A lister" in perception, if not reality. But until most of those blogs are listed, blogdigger local is simply irrelevent for the city I live in.

Now, why aren't any of the blogs here listed? The blogdigger faq says "Blogdigger uses a number of methods to identify a site's location. The best way is to support the ICBM or geoPosition meta data specification which defines your site's latitude/longitude as an HTML metatag. More information can be found at GeoURL, and information on finding your latitude/longitude can be found here."

So unless you plan to be listed there, and run through the hoops of entering your geolocation in your metadata, you have very little chance of showing up. And stratification by popularity just doesn't work when the sample too small.

[Greg Gershman]

Greg: The initial launch of Blogdigger Local is beta, in a short while we should have broader support for discovering blogs in different locales, along with a method for individuals to directly input their location into our system. The nice thing about the metadata approach is that other applications can benefit from the data as well.

On another note, nothing in Blogdigger is ranked by popularity. We're completely democratic when it comes to how we order our results (by date). So it happens to be a very good tool for finding new voices. Popularity isn't always a bad metric either (Google seems to be doing OK...), but it's nice to be have them seperated.

[Marion Paige]

How about a list of A-List Rappers and A-List Hip Hop Stars?

The whole benefit of a low "barrier-to-entry" publishing model is that it allows "special interest groups" to publish their interests and to find others like them in other cities and countries. I think the biggest joke of the century HAS to be that all of the so-called A-List Bloggers are White Males; the exact audience that mainstream media already covers very well.

Look, all I'm saying is that there is a revolution and there are A-List Bloggers, but, You Girls ain't them. And, You Girls ain't likely to know who the A-List Bloggers are now, until five years from now when the New York Times finally writes an article about them

[Conánn]

I love this stuff Robert Scoble has 242 blogs on his feedmap, I have 2, both of which are not in use. Geo meta is the future of business on the net which will start with blogs and spread to general internet. This could be a c-change enabling small business to compete with major corporations on a local level. Global identification leading to deglobalization through mass media communications, its poetry.

[richard]

I keep a list of local bloggers for San Luis Obispo, CA at slopages.com. Technorati helps me most, where I search for blog posts containing the text "obispo"... but's at this time, it's still a very manual process.