Hey !
And everyone else. I’ll repeat a few basic principles of the ‘ecosystem’ thing, just to keep them clear in everyone’s mind:
1) When links are counted on your page, only the links you have to other bloggers on the list are counted. So you can have links to CNN, Yahoo, AOL, etc — but none of those will count in your total, or have any effect on anybody else’s total inbound links.
2) Conversely, your total number of inbound links only represents the links you are getting from other weblogs on the list. If there are twenty other blogs that have links to you, but none of them are on the list, you won’t get ‘credit’ for them.
3) Keep in mind what others have observed, which is that strictly speaking, this is not the whole blogosphere by any means — it would more precisely be called the ecosystem (and map) of the political blogosphere (and who knows, maybe only a small chunk of that). As I mentioned in the original post, I started with Glenn and Stephen’s lists — hardcore politicos both — and worked out from there. So if your blog is a hardcore technical blog, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t rank that high on this list — because right now, at least, there aren’t many other techie blogs on the list to give you links that would be counted. You may have the most linked-to blog in the technoblogosphere, but that only helps if all the other techies get on the list as well.
There are several other interesting projects going on that are doing similar work to mine in ‘mapping’ the blogosphere; I’ll do a post sometime today with a roundup — there’s definitely some cool stuff out there.
Anyway, getting back to the political vs. techie distinctions: I’m toying with another idea that may explore those “subworlds” of the blogosphere in a more interesting way, so there may be Part III of the ecosystem project up sometime this week.
But I really want to do some writing. Honest. Damnit, my left brain and right brain keep pulling me in different directions. Interesting geek project or meaningful prose? Please fate, don’t make me choose!