Blog: Blogging

Blogshares is pretty cute. It's a play market where you buy and sell shares in blogs, which are valued based on how the links pointing to them in a PageRank-like algorithm (links from more valuable blogs are themselves more valuable).

They have a top 100 which is a nice summary of top blog sites (though it includes stuff like the New York Times which isn't a blog per se).

There are a lot of ways it's not really like a market - the prices are influenced by trading activity, but aren't set by a bid and ask spread with market makers. Instead, the software artificially pushes it up or down when the price gets too far out of sync with the "actual value" based on the inbound links.

Anyway, markets (theoretically) reflect public attitudes and anticipate foreseeable trends, so it's an interesting exercise in predictive modeling.

Posting links from the Daypop Top 40 just seems like piling on the bandwagon, but it's really useful for finding neat stuff.

"A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications. Every day, the air waves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear."

- Tim Robbins, star of both the absolute best and worst movies of our time, speaking out most eloquently and effectively against the cold wall of silence.