Google Blog Search
I wrote previously that anyone, including Mancubist readers who click here or scroll down, can keep track of people blogging about Manchester thanks to Technorati.
Sadly Technorati, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to include Myspace blogs, which means a number of the posts are someone’s painfully detailed memoirs about a boring trip to see their favourite emocore band play at Satan’s Hollow.
Bloggers are often accused of writing nothing more than introspective, inconsequential rubbish. Myspace bloggers, however, seem to have taken irrelevant musing to another level. Needless to say, I’m not one.
Luckily, Google has rolled out an impressive Blog Search site of its own, which gives noticeably less authority to Myspacers. I’ve switched feeds now and the current search string reads something like “manchester -united -football -soccer -nh -hampshire“.
Elsewhere in Manchester blogland, the Manchizzle has taken a welcome breather from her month-long blogging break to deconstruct Moving Manchester and praise The Salford Star. Both publications have been mentioned here previously.
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My immediate response is sympathy for your point, because MySpace certainly is full of a big lot of crap. But there is a danger of being too snobbish… when I started blogging I wrote the same self-indulgent rubbish and it’s only by growing up and continuing to find and read other blogs (for which technorati remains a great tool) that I feel I have made modest improvements.
Furthermore, I think there’s a real problem of elitism in blogging, for something that claims to be such a democratic force: this probably isn’t true of any Mancunian blogs, but on a global level sites like kottke.org, plasticbag.org, and lots of the other ’showpiece’ blogs which have been around which year dot, to my mind, generate massively more traffic than their content really justifies.
By newfred on 11.17.06 12:50 pm
My response is a personal one: I read as many Myspace blogs about Manchester as probably anyone. I just don’t think they’re as high quality, interesting or relevant as others. Google’s search offerings seems to better.
I think Mancunian blogs are, on the whole, more democratic than most. I’ve seen very little, if any, elitism and a lot of inclusiveness.
I don’t read – or link to – any of the blogging elite that seems to exist.
By Mancubist on 11.17.06 1:15 pm
Yes, it’s definitely hard to see the wood for the trees sometimes, but of course the most powerful way of establishing patterns of readership and finding good content is through good people such as yourself and The Manchizzle putting together collections of relevant links around a particular locality or topic.
To use an academic analogy, I suppose Technorati offers a Library Catalogue while individual blogs & communities of blogs offer more refined and immediately useful course reading lists! Both, I suppose, have their uses.
By newfred on 11.17.06 7:04 pm
You need to use both really (and blogpulse too), otherwise there’s always something missed. Mind, some posts then disappear off one and re-appear on another, which is VERY odd.
By Urbis on 11.24.06 7:22 pm
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