Made a blog post on popularity.

Do join the discussion there and let others know as well.

Thanks :)

P.S. Remove the Crazy Factor pingback, it is a spam blog.

Thanks for that great link. Lovely read.

This Kiruba thing sounds much like he’s being trolled (for whatever reasons).

What I like about Kiruba’s blog is his honest take and shows human side of things, and simple life among others.

He is much appreciative when you respond to his quest and whenever it adds to the constructive discussion of his posts. I have never seen him lose his temper on his blog. It’s a gift. Kiruba seems to have it all. I don’t think he really cares about the numbers. He is a guy having fun at what he’s doing and shares those things too (online), and I respect him for that, be it his cross-country bicycling, marathon or rowing.

I have been following his blog since 2002. He held barcamp like talks in Chennai among friends, and used to have tech-related topics and sessions on a Sunday morning. I remember that. (So, in a sense, although he might not have had a word for it, he really started barcamp like discussions in India.)

“Don’t feed the troll” is something we learn by experience. I guess, this is one such.

As for link popularity, in my case, is a non-starter. To me I am still lurking somewhere at 50k technorati rank (even if it shows 6000 something). Because people are using my theme and hence the link. It doesn’t say anything about the quality of my blog. So, it is easy to deduct me from the list of popular ones.

[As a matter of fact, I didn't want a link back because of the theme, and hence I hid my link in the source by commenting the line -- see any Plain Vanilla powered blog's source, the link is commented, by me in the file. But I can't stop people from putting-up an attribution, although not needed at all from my side. Blogsome even went on to put a very visible link at the bottom. And those are the ones that are showing.]

A lot of others have earned their due through their writings and posts, and so those links are their earnings. Unlike mine.

That reminds me about pointing to a recent wonderful post: Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful.

It is worth reading for all those who squabbling about ‘popularity’.

To join the discussion. How exactly do we measure popularity? And have we “Indian Bloggers” ever decided to be world players?

I think I will write a more detailed post on my blog in the evening, instead of making this a long comment. Will post back here then.

BTW, what is the funda behind Desi Pundit and how do you get your contributors and how exactly do they contribute?

The blog has even been quoted in Guardian Online, but sadly no one has noticed it….a bit of self-promotion never hurts..

Quite surprising to see so many posts on popular bloggers. :)
Few days back I already talked about my post on Bloggers & popularity. (You already checked I think).

Very well said. Found you via technorati…

The Girl Who.

its a vicious circle. Once you get hits, you crave for more

very true…without even a shadow of doubt

Sharique, let us admit that popularity and quality doesn’t always go together especially because perception of quality is subjective. But at a more personal level, attributes like a top blogger doesn’t matter but lets admit it, its a vicious circle. Once you get hits, you crave for more :)

I think I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine mentality will not go out of Indian blogoshphere in general.

S

Regarding those header images, unfortunately they aren’t mine. I have borrowed them from Flickr with due credit on my Colophon page.

Prope//er, thanks for the insightful comment. I agree that I can be verbose at times but I wanted to cover all the bases on advantages of using Technorati ranking as a measure for popularity.

The dearth of alternative blogging as we see in the Western world may be attributable to the lack of numbers. I doubt there are even 100,000 Indian bloggers so the incentive to create content is sorely lacking. Why aren’t we able to do the things that you point out? I frankly have no answer. Perhaps it is a cultural thing or simply or inability to hear an alternative opinion or even our inherent character flaw to run down any opinion that is different from our own. This warrants an extended discussion.