Scamming Technorati.
Step off Pilgrim, Ito, Winer, and all of you A-list bloggers 'cause I'm more technoratical than all y'all. I'm #4 in the Technorati 100. Bam! Look at my numbers:
Technorati, for those who know not, is a website that rates the popularity of weblogs based on the number of links to each weblog. My modest little weblog is not very popular, so how did this happen? I assure you, I never intended to scam my way to the top. I was kidding about that secret plan.
Here's the deal. Since time began and before I ever heard of Technorati, I've been putting links to Roller developers Lance Lavandowska, Matt Raible, and myself in the page templates that ship with Roller. Some folks remove those links, but most don't and so now most every new Roller-based blog boosts our standings on Technorati. As JRoller grew to thousands of users, folks started to notice this. A couple of weeks ago, everybody was amazed to see my modest little weblog hovering around #80.
Recently, a lot of blogs named "My Moblog" started to appear in <a href= "http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/links.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Frollerweblogger.org%2Fpage%2Froller"> my Technorati Link Cosmos. Turns out, all of these blogs are running on a Roller based server at 212.180.4.202 which, according to whois, is owned by EasyNet.FR. I'm not sure what they are doing there at EasyNet, but perhaps Minerva, or one of her readers, knows. Minerva's weblog, called Geegaw contains a link to one of those EasyNet blogs with the text Top 100, here I come! See below:
What does she, or one of her readers, know that I don't? Is somebody using Roller to game Technorati and if so, why am I the beneficiary of this scam?
Back to work.
It was a little difficult to return to work today after two weeks off. I enjoy my job, but after two weeks of sleeping late, playing with the kids, and hacking Roller, I felt like a kid going back to school. We've got another release coming up, so I need to get in gear fast. I also need to wrap up hierarchical categories for Roller and finish up the Roller presentation that I hope to present at the February TriJUG meeting.