How to Automagically Make the Technorati 100

Short answer: write open source blogging software.

While browsing Technorati's Top 100 list, to my surprise at number 92, Dave Johnson's Blogging Roller! Even more incredulous, it bested even JavaBlogs!. For the uninformed, the Technorati 100 is supposed to list the top 100 weblogs in the world. The list includes well known technology sites/blogs like Slashdot, Scripting News, Kuro5hin, Joel on Software, Gizmodo and Joi Ito's Web. Blogs that you would think should make the cut but could NOT are Jon Udell, Clay Shirky, Erik Thauvin and Russell Beattie. So to find Roller Weblogger in the list was a complete surprise to me.

This therefore looks extremely suspect, something is fishy here. So I did a bit of digging by looking at the Blogging Roller Cosmos. Well surprise again, it turns out that the default Roller templates have Dave's blog in its blogroll. Hundreds of bloggers who use the Roller system haven't bothered to modify the default thus boosting Dave's otherwise inconspicous blog to the top! Now granted that most blogs are quickly abandoned, the effect is that the default settings tend to thrive.

Wonderful side-effect I must say!

RaibleDesigns and Vanity Foul, the two other blogs in the default templates, are also working their way up in ranking and both may hit the top 100 pretty soon.

Looks like they've unintentionally discovered a very *interesting* vehicle to "game" the system.