Life, the Blogosphere, and Everything: Observing Collective Madness.

I was over at Technorati, and ended up doing a survey. People fail to realize how much a person who is paying attention learns about the people who are giving the survey while taking the survey (and most surveys for businesses are copy and paste anyway). One of the questions, though, asked me if I looked at popular content on Technorati.

Why, no, I don't. Why? That's a good question, but the times I have checked the popular content, I have wondered about the blogosphere. In, 'The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture', John Battelle wrote about 'the database of intentions'. How what the people using search engines do is informally add to the overall database of intentions. So let's look at the database of intentions on Technorati.

Books

In the popular books category, we can have a lot of fun.

4 books on blogging in the top 50 (8%) - no surprise on a blog search engine. It seems one of the favorite topics of bloggers are themselves, which isn't a bad thing but is a thing that will eventually have to change. It's a bubble. Eventually it will bust. But bloggers do enjoy reading about themselves. It's sort of a rationalization of existence, perhaps. I went through that phase. 'I think, therefore I blog' stage of the blogging disease. :-)

2 books on dogs (4%). 1 is for owners of fat dogs, the other is for owners of sick dogs. Bloggers may have sick and fat dogs. Maybe it's because they are blogging and not running the poor dog around. And sitting down and reading a book isn't going to exercise the dog. I'd advise audio books you can listen to while walking your dog. It might do some good for you, too.

2 books on cats (4%). Similar to the dog books. Fat cats, and an owner's manual (feed. Change litter box. repeat as necessary. catnip. pet. play with. take to vet. shampoo vigorously in a ice cold tub). Maybe these are Egyptian bloggers, I don't know.

Now if you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're thinking maybe fat and unhealthy pets are an indicator of fat and unhealthy owners. OK. Guess what?

Two books on health (4%). Chronic fatigue and health building. W00t! Have some potato chips when you sit down and read it. Right. Ooh. A book on running. Let's make it 3 health books. Sit down and read about running. Nothing crazy about that.

Oh I could go on, but the point is made. What about me? Out of the books, I've read 'Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking' (thumbs up), 'The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations' (thumbs down), and 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference' (thumbs up).

But I don't read what is popular. Sometimes what I read becomes popular, but that's rare enough. I'm presently reading 'Magic Seeds' - my first book by the person who my father's side of the family claims now that he's a Nobel Laureate. Go figure. The book is going OK.

So that's books. What else?

News

Top 3: Al Quaeda related, political related, and glowing green pigs. Database of intentions. Right.

If you want to have fun, picture one person who all these headlines appeal to and create a character sketch.

Movies

Hmm. The movies look normal to me, but of course there is less of a selection (and no movies about bloggers and their pets with collective health disorders). Or maybe people who blog about movies are

Blogs

Yup, they look like the same top 100 I saw before. Yawn. Stretch. Boooooooooooooooring. But if you look at these popular blogs - where popularity is measured by people who blog and link to the blogs - well, do another character sketch.

Conclusions

The blogosphere is made up of collectively insane and perhaps incestually popular people. No surprise. If that's popular, then I can do without it (until I decide to look again and scare myself). It does give one an idea of what would sell. Like maybe a health book for bloggers and their pets (Type, stretch, type, stretch, push away, pull toward...), among other things.

In the end, I see Technorati as a big MMORPG. And according to the marketing books on the book list, it probably is, complete with fluffing and everything.

Ahh well. I didn't expect sanity, and I wasn't surprised. Therefore all is well. Without blogs, there might be some serious mayhem on the street with nobody to write about it.:-)