Feedster has answered the Calacanis Challenge and come up with the Feedster Top 500 for August, 2005. The announced:

Today, Feedster launched the FEEDSTER Top 500, a ranking of the most interesting and important blogs in the US. The ranking is achieved by taking into account factors such as the number of inbound links over time; if the blog has been recently updated; and the elimination of obvious non-blogs that have appeared on other top-blog lists. [bolding mine]

Ok, first, why in the US? Why the restrictor? Especially since it was not effective, and blogs from all over are included. Why were blogs eliminated for appearing on other lists? That biases the list. And obvious top-bloggers are included, so how was it determined who would go and who would stay? Using inbound links and recent updates in no way eliminates the bias determined from the older bloggers - it’s the same metrics.

“We left out professional news sites, aggregation systems, and some fairly static web sites that happened to have feeds but don’t ‘feel bloggy,’” says Mr. Johnson. “This sort of filtering is a different screen than what we use to categorize news versus blogs in Feedster search and is much more subjective. Our first iteration of this list solves the staleness problems and not-a-blog problems that others have faced.”

Well, not completely. The determination of what is a blog and what is news, is, as stated, arbitrary. Would I count Boing Boing as a news site or a blog? I’d be borderline on that one, but would definitely think it more news than blog based on the volume. And DeviantART doesn’t seem anything like a blog to me.

The list is indeed longer and perhaps more diverse due to this, but the metrics of the list are still the same. From this, I don’t think the list lives up to my expectations or those of others. Perhaps if a step had been added to add the description of the blog or the topic categories, it would prove useful. If diversity was a goal, as stated, then it must be described. Looking at names of blogs does not tell unfamiliar readers that the blogs are diverse in topics - the names are often arbitrary.

Read more of my comments and suggestions on Blogaholics.

Via Read/Write Web

Update: Scott Rafer notes that the inclusion of “US” in the press release was his mistake and is not actually a part of the list. The wiki URL has been corrected from Scott’s post.

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