It looks like Darren Rowse has heard about the Technorati Faves Exchange and Link Train and decided to offer his opinion on the matter. It’s probably safe to say that Darren isn’t the biggest fan of this meme and has some strong opinions as to how “sad” this whole meme was. And now that one of the more prominent bloggers have basically come out against the whole idea, we are beginning to see a lot of bloggers coming out from the woodwork with their opinions on the matter as you can see the comments piling up on both DoshDosh and Darren’s site. Being that I was the originator of the Faves Exchange Link Train, I felt compelled to write something in response to the questions he asks in his post:
Does the Technorati Top 100 Most Favorited Blog List Drive Traffic?
After reading Darren’s own answer to this question, I felt that he has lost touch with how hard it is for an up and coming blogger to get any kind of traffic, especially when entering today’s highly competitive blogosphere. I’ll admit that it hasn’t brought the amount of traffic that I thought it would, but no matter what, it has provided an increase in traffic nonetheless that has definitely been more than a “blip on the radar.” The best attribute of any Link Train is that it gave my blog more of a chance to attract one more reader who will add me to their RSS feed, comment on my post and be part of my community. To use an analogy, a rich man might ignore a penny on street while a person struggling to get by will take the time to pick it up.
Does it Increase Profile?
Relatively, it has greatly increased my profile. I haven’t had any advertisers or reporters contact me either, but I have had numerous bloggers contact me, asking me questions about blogging, marketing and the web in general. I hope that this has more to do with these visitors reading other posts from my blog than anything else. For me, getting these new readers have been a great byproduct of the Link Train and Faves exchange.
Does it give Egos a Boost?
Of course cracking the Top 100 for anything is an ego boost. Not all of us can have the ego of a person making a six figure income from blogging, so we have to take any kind of boost we can get to build our own web egos. At the end of the day, all bloggers already have huge egos, since we have opinions we want others to hear and love it when they are heard. At the end of the day, I really think this added exposure for the Technorati Faves list will eventually even out the playing fields as the followers of “A-List” blogs will make it a point to help bring their favorite blogs back to where they were before.
Does Technorati Care?
Probably not, but Technorati should care if they want to grow their website. The faves exchange experiment shows how rudimentary Technorati’s system is and how necessary it is for them to upgrade their systems. Also, this would be a great opportunity for them to start to categorize blogs, so that these lists are not dominated by the most active – blogs that blog about blogging. A good example of how popular this could be and how Technorati should model a future system is by taking a look at the Bloggers Choice Awards, which currently has segmented some of the most popular blogs into their proper categories.
So what’s the point of Technorati Favorites and Why Do I promote it?
The point of Technorati faves was to just have another way for Technorati to rank blogs based on a direct voting system instead of backlinking. It also tried to do what RSS Readers currently do and that is to highlight recent posts from our favorite bloggers. Personally, I never even noticed the faves feature until Stephen Fung mentioned it for charity, which is probably why I only started out with 6 faves before this whole Faves Exchange started.
So what do I think about swapping Favorites to Climb the Top 100 Most Favorited Blogs List?
I don’t see any difference from exchanging links, asking your blogger friends to digg a story for you because you dugg one for them or even faving yourself in Technorati. So, if Darren wants to talk about exchanging faves as being “sad,” then he should get off his high horse and check himself because faving himself (as he has done) would be downright pathetic. Maybe he should take his own advice and the advice of Kevin from Quartz Mountain and make better use of his time. Don’t get me wrong, I faved myself too, but I just don’t like when people criticize others for something they’re doing themselves.
What do I think about the Top 100 Most Favorited Blogs List?
This was an experiment to see what being on the Top 100 List really meant for overall traffic to the site. I will continue to use this feature on Technorati and believe that it will continue to give me access and exposure to some sites that I probably will never have found for myself. For those who question the intergrity of this practice, I would just suggest that you first closely take a look at what you have been doing before overly criticizing the marketing practices of your peers.
Sebastian Lewis and 12 others are discussing. 
bob h. and 11 others are discussing. 
It looks like he wrote the post to create some attention for himself, and evil linkbacks.
I heard yesterday the whole system was attacked by a bunch of people voting for Rosie and FARK.
does anyone know how to reduce just the “stickied” post so that it’s summarized? thanks!
Tay 4.58 pm on 04.05.2007 Permalink
Yes, I noticed this too! Maybe it’s just me, but personally, I like the old way better. However, they now have cool nifty pages for the blogs, don’t they? I like that part
~Tay
Wolf Stone 5.21 pm on 04.05.2007 Permalink
Just noticed the change myself..they’ve also increased the size of the font once you log into your account and tweaked the page layout slightly !! It’s gonna take some getting used to……
Gary Lee 6.08 pm on 04.05.2007 Permalink
looks like they updated their WTF section too!