We Are The Unknown

John Scott, infamous courter of controversy, has decided to put a fairly hefty sum of his own money on the line to see if we can't address a little of the imbalance in the blogosphere (oh, how I hate that word). He's offering $10,000 to be split between bloggers who link out to the lesser known blogs out there - those outside the various Top 100 lists and those who never seem to be named in one of those meme things that go around from time to time.

With that in mind, I find myself in the position of being sorely tempted to join in. Not so much for the money (though I wouldn't mind a few extra dollars), but more because I often finding myself coming across blogs that just don't get the credit they deserve. I can't count the number of times I have seen someone post an intelligent thought, or a new technique for achieving something, that has gone largely unnoticed - and then a few weeks later something similar is linked to by everyone under the sun because it has appeared on a Top 100 blog. I'm not accusing anyone of plagiarism, of course. A little known site can post something spectacular and be passed by, while one of the "A list" can post a picture of their breakfast and have it seen by half the known World within minutes.

Maybe it's all down to rampant ass-kissing. The little guys want to be noticed and so they go name dropping and linking to big sites. You only have to read the fawning comments on some of the posts by the technorati elite to see just how desperate people are to be noticed by these big fish. And for good reason - a link from one of the top sites can bring in tens of thousands of visitors overnight.

Sites like Digg and del.icio.us are helping address the balance. By focussing on individual posts and articles, they are helping filter quality. Of course, a site needs to be noticed by lots of Digg or del.icio.us users to be ranked well - which means they need to be widely read in the first place.

Enough ranting - one thing the average blogger can do to help these smaller sites is to link to them. Not just add them to an anonymous, overlooked list on the side of your site, mind - write about what you have found. Tell people, properly, why they should take time out of their day to follow your recommendation and visit somewhere new.