Apparently, someone came to my blog today through this link: A site called blogshares.com.
This is the thought behind “blogshares”:
BlogShares is a fantasy stock market where weblogs are the companies. Players invest fictional dollars on shares in blogs. Blogs are valued by their incoming links and add value to other blogs by linking to them. Prices can go up or down based on trading and the underlying value of the blog.
The topics a blogger writes about are labeled “Industries” here. So if I write about… kittens pictures, then my blog is a corporation in the kitten picture industry. The “analysts” can vote on which “Industries” the blog belongs to. Blogs are valued by how many other pages link to them and how many they link to: If more other sites are linking them, the blog’s value goes up. The blog is then “performing well” for the “stockholders”. And worst of all, they’re actually serious. This is not some kind of satire by a couple of witty cynics but a real internet community. I didn’t think that the ideas I had here would be realised that quickly (4 years before I wrote the entry in fact)
I feel a bit as if someone is raping a puppet that looks just like me: If I look at it and imagine that this could be me, I will become angry at this perversion, if I look the other way and remember that it’s just a puppet, it won’t bother me. So I guess I’ll just ignore it. Whatever gets these people through their day…
(also, if we applied this logic to German wordpress blogs, then the blogs of the “anti-”Germans would be the most valuable ones. That shows that this logic can’t possibly work in the real world)
Hi there Buntnessel
In actual fact, Blogshares is an extremely intellectually challenging game which has the added positive of developing the best, human-voted index of blogs on the net.
Blogs’ values are mainly determined by the value of blogs linking into them. As with obtaining search engine prominence with google etc., if you want your blog to rise in value, you need to have other blogs linking into yours.
At present there are no blogs registered with Blogshares that are linking in to your blog.
You might like to claim your blog in Blogshares however, and can easily do so at http://www.blogshares.com/
Cheers
Fringe
I don’t like the mindset behind this, thinking of the topics bloggers write about as “industries” in which they “produce”, seeing entries as “products” – I think this kind of language devaluates the creative process behind the writing by reducing it to a kind of “production”, implying that they’re made to be “sold”. I also asserts implicitly that the number one goal of bloggers is to become as popular as possible and that the value of a blog depends upon its popularity… some of the most inspiring bloggers I know are not very well-known at all.
Should people write based on what they think will get them readers? Pretty soon we’d all be caught in a very narrow frame, not trying to offend anyone and only writing about what we think is “fashionable” instead of writing about what’s important to us, even if we don’t make it into the Top 10. Most bloggers don’t get money for doing what they do but some are driven by their egos, and this is encouraged by such a game.
But as I wrote in the entry, I don’t really have a problem with the existence of this game. (I only have a problem with the real-world-equivalent of it that treats real people this way) I would just prefer to… look the other way
Whilst I can understand your point of view in regard to the terminology, you might note that industries in the game produce ideas, as do credible writers.
Linking to other relevant blogs, as you do yourself, is good blogging practice – in fact, I found your very readable blog through one of the blogs in the game to which you link.
However, the value of blogs in the game is not always directly proportionate with the value of the content, although it seems true to me that eventually, good and influential writers WILL be linked to, regardless of whether they seek acclaim or not.
Blogshares is one of the ways that can happen
The best stock investing systems will be based principally on objective, measurable data. It’s critical to “exorcise” the emotions from the investor’s buy/sell decisions.