Exiting the Ecosystem
Category: Navel Gazing...
Posted Sunday, April 24, 2005 at 03:54 PM [GMT-6]

As far as I know, I'm the only person to have ever done what I've just done, which is adding a meta tag to an active blog's template that will result in that blog's delisting from The Blogosphere Ecosystem.

Don't get me wrong; the Ecosystem is still an interesting resource. The Gazette has been listed for almost three years and during that period the Ecosystem has grown from about 10,000 listings to over 21,000. We managed to claw our way into a seemingly inalterable state of upper mediocrity (which is the only inference I can take from being classified as a "Four-toed Gelatinous Mass with Partial Exoskeleton") in the top 20% of the list.

But, I've been increasingly cognizant of the fact that 21,000 blogs out of an estimated...10 million? 20 million? who knows?...is, frankly, not that big a deal. Especially when you consider that many of the new sites being added to the Ecosystem are pørn and other blatantly commercial sites. Of course, aside from the question of morality in the case of the former, there's nothing inherently wrong with blogs being set up for those purposes. I'm not a crusader for blogging purity, in terms of subject, structure...or anything else, for that matter. But, at some point, association with that list of sites ceases to become meaningful to me.

In any event, I find myself going to Technorati more and more often, for purposes both narcissistic and educational. I suppose that the Ecosystem and Technorati were never intended as competitors, but the latter's metadata just seems a lot more useful nowadays.

So, I bid adieu to the Ecosystem, while wishing it well. And 18,000+ other blogs get to move up a notch. No, that's OK; don't bother thanking me. It's just the way I am.