Do you pay attention to your blog's Technorati 'authority' ranking?Why?
I can't fault you if you do- for years I had one of their icons on my sidebar and I paid careful attention to my ranking, agonizing when my 'authority' dropped, exulting when it rose- what a waste of time that was.
Technorati 'authority' has nothing to do with gravitas or credibility and everything to do with advertising and revenue- it's a tool for modern-day Thugee cultists to quantify their virtual Ponzi machinations, sometimes pronounced as 'Ess Eee Oh'- an acronym for a phrase that rhymes with Birch Fringin' Croptimization- the idea is to fill your website with catch-words that will direct traffic to your site, traffic that (hopefully) will click on your advertising links , generating .008 cents per click- if enough clicks are made, the web-site gets a payout. Generally speaking, one needs a great many websites to generate any significant revenue- dozens of redundant websites under the control of a single 'Web Master' are not uncommon.
What's wrong with that? Not much. In fact, it's advertising that keeps services such as Blogger free...Blogger isn't a public service, after all, it's an advertising medium, just like MySpace , Facebook et al- content is secondary, traffic is King as far as Bloogle is concerned- and that's OK with me since I would rather see Bloogle ads than pay a monthly blogger fee.
But.
I take umbrage when self-appointed arbiters of 'blogworld' behavior start telling other bloggers what they should and shouldn't do on their own blogs; specifically those who leave angry comments about blogger memes that involve links...
...don't put links to your friends in your posts, don't link to yourself, they kvetch, you are disrupting our Technorati rankings...
This is akin to a telemarketer calling you at home and lecturing you on the proper way to use your telephone.
I stopped taking Internet 'authority' seriously when I discovered that I had a great deal of it- at any given moment I'm in the Bloggle top 10 for a large number of subjects ranging from cryptozoology to fossil-fuel alternatives- in my favorite example, I 'invented' Whalanol on this blog- a satirical discovery that was plagiarised by an Ess Eee Oh outfit and passed off as real 'news'. I tracked down the offender; after some hassle I was given twelve dollars for making stuff up- the Ess Eee Oh outfit stopped paying for content at around the same time. I don't know if my kerfluffle had anything to do with it.
It doesn't matter if whalanol exists or not- all that matters is if you believe in it. If you believe in whalanol ,you will buy it, abstraction or not.
Information is the Schroedinger's Cat of the Internet. The Consumer is Pavlov's Dog.
Caveat Emptor, motherfucker.
-Do possums attack people? (#2 of 13,000; the more I mention it, the more 'authority' I get.)
-Eating hagfish? (#2 of 11,800)
-Doing dishes as erotic foreplay? (#2 of 2800 -and trying harder!)
-Umbrellas on airplanes? (I am #1 of 375,000 for this, a higher ranking than Time Magazine!)
(Update: This post is already #2 on Google for umbrellas on airplanes, I just checked. Still believe in Internet 'authority'?)
Believe it or not, the Internet is full of bullshit. I have created my fair share of outrageous claptrap and have been rewarded with 'authority' for some of my most egregious transgressions against reality- seriously, there is no such thing as whalanol.
Yet, I mean.
My satirical come-on for hagfish farms may have been a bit more prescient than I like- according to my burgeoning sitemeter referrals, there is an uptick of global interest in the economics of hagfish husbandry- an accurate, if overlooked, barometer of the current world financial state.
Do you remember oil shale? Hagfish farming is like oil shale extraction, it comes up when economic times are tough-and oil shale is back in the news- this time the technology involved seems to have some serious weaponization potential- using microwaves to melt the earth sounds dangerous...is it true? We will find out someday, I'm afraid.
P.S. Bonus 'authority' points if you can name the man on the book cover (above) that isn't Gandhi.
