Recently I joined a project called the 2000 Bloggers. Tino Buntic was the person behind this project. The purpose of his brainchild was to gather 2000 Blogger’s photos into one page, creating a montage. The only requirements to join the list were a blog URL and a photo of the blog author. Tino never asked or required others to link back or post the 2000 Bloggers into their own pages or blogs. Me, I did it on my own. I thought it would be cool to have those blogger’s montage on my blog. I volunteered to provide the code to others who wanted to display it on pages all for good, clean fun.
I just found out today that Tino has discontinued the project. He also took down the page that displayed the 2000 Bloggers. The reason? Because several bloggers are crying “foul” and stating that Tino’s project was a chain blog, spam blog, or link farm. How can they accuse Tino of that? They didn’t even know what his real intentions were. However, Technorati also has viewed this as a negative effect on Technorati rankings turning them upside-down.
We’re listening to these concerns. In the same manner, in which we decline to index blogs that don’t meet our quality criteria (AKA “splogs”), we’re loath to indulge these “chain posts” (“pain costs”, ouch). Your voice is the most important one in the blogosphere’s distributed conversation. To dissuade chain posts from submerging your voice in their dilutive effects, we’ve updated our indexing systems on an experimental basis to filter out links of this nature. We all love photo collages of faces; we’ve had them, albeit on a smaller scale, on the Technorati site since last summer. However, “join us and use these links” memes such as 2000 Bloggers is really a disservice to rank measurement systems, and thus this decision to change our indexing policies in that regard.
We hope these changes and many others that we have cooking will help you tap into the blogosphere to find the conversations, information, and people you’re looking for.
I’m sure Tino Buntic never meant it this way. I’m sure his intentions were good. I admit that this thing did boost my Technorati rankings and also others who joined it. But if indeed the Technorati ranks were affected, I’m sure in a month’s time all would be filtered out and be back to its previous state.
I also can’t blame Technorati if they view it this way. They are also trying to protect the integrity of their ranking system. Technorati is known to be spam-proof and I guess this is one way of preventing future problems by preventing chain blogs or splogs (spam blogs) from taking over Technorati.
So is the 2000 Bloggers project a chain blog? a splog? a link farm? Maybe, maybe not. Others can say it is, others say it’s not. But it wasn’t intended to be that way. It wasn’t intended to game Technorati or Google. I think it just got out of hand and that Tino didn’t foresee any of these issues coming up. Too bad because it was a really good idea. Good luck Tino, we’re waiting for your next big idea!
yes you are right!!!
i was one of them and now i am sad hat he discontinued the processs!
it brought us together.
@David – I totally agree with what you said. This project wasn't intended to be a chain blog, splog or link farm as others are accusing it to be. Like you said, the issues with Technorait & Google was a side effect but it wasn't Tino's intention to game them.
I too joined because it looked fun and cool. This isn't over yet. Someone has taken over the project and put a site for it at 2kbloggers.com
@Teli – I know..I was surprised and disappointed too when I found out that Tino stopped the project.
Regarding the statement that you quoted, Technorati was wrong about that because Tino only required a blog url and photo for everyone who wanted to join. He never asked for a link back or implied any links.
As I mentioned above, someone took over and put up a site just for it.
@baddie – I see..you were right about it then. It's all good, you can wait for another project like this then you can join. :)
I was about to put up a picture of myself on my profile the other day but I stumbled upon Technorati's post before I was able to do so. Long story short, I didn't sign up because I had a feeling that the whole project won't last long after Technorati's post. Sadly, I was right. Oh well.
I agree with David on this one. It's disappointing that Tino had to shut down because of people's complaints.
While I can understand Technorati's problem, why should Tino be responsible for Technorati's link measurement system? It's Technorati's responsibility to make sure their algorithms can take these things into consideration.
I hope Tino starts this project up again, or another blogger takes over where he left off, because in my opinion he was simply trying to build a community of bloggers. Even if this started out as a link farm project, it evolved into something fun for those participating.
Teli
The 2000 bloggers was clearly not intended to be a link farm or to game anything… well I never saw it that way and I still dont see it that way. Everything that happened with technorati, and/or google ranking to me were a "side effect" of the project. When I first signed up, all I was thinking was that this sound cool, and that this could end up being something more than just a list later on. A community or had just formed, thats all.
People know that this wasnt a ploy to game technorati, the people over at technorati knows this.
I wouldve like to see how this would end up…and for some reason I think it isnt quite over yet.