I’ve spent a bit of time this morning updating my blogroll. Most of the major blogging hosts or engines have altered the location of their RSS feeds over the past six months, and as people upgrade or switch to Feedburner, I’ve lost track of a few people. I also like to go out in search of new blogs every once in a while and see what I find that I should perhaps be following for at least a little while, so I’ve added as well as updated.
While I was at it, I even added a couple new bits of blog-bling in the sidebar. That, and I’m thinking it’s probably time for a new layout — maybe something a bit cleaner, possibly a 3-column layout. Do people have any thoughts or preferences on the subject?
Back on the subject of Emerging/Missional Church bloggers, it looks like Emerging Church Blogs is pretty much defunct — no updates since December 15th, not sure what’s up with that… does anybody know? I would happily volunteer to take it over if there’s some problem with administrating or hosting it. In the meantime, anyone who is missing that site can feel free to use my blogroll, which does the same thing, aggregating feeds… uses the same software, in fact. If you’re on that list (now over 150 blogs) and find it useful, drop me a note and let me know what your local time adjustment is relative to GMT. (Presently I’m not compensating for the feed times, so the most recent post is usually but not necessarily displayed first.) I originally set this up for my own use to help me skim through the blogs I follow as they’re updated — hopefully nobody minds being there if it becomes more public, and hopefully you’ll get a bit of traffic from it if that’s the case. I know I used to get a reasonable amount of traffic from Emerging Church Blogs when it was actually running, despite publishing my full feed there. (And btw, if your blog doesn’t publish the full feeds, please change the setting — this is a large cause for people unsubscribing from your feed.)
In my search for good EMC blogs to follow, I was thinking again about so many of the under-rated EMC bloggers out there. In my quick evaluation, if 8 of the last 10 posts were personal only or weren’t on the themes I wanted to follow, I skipped past it. Not fair perhaps, but you need some measure to move along quickly… and I recognize this leaves some people undervalued.
At one time, I had cracked the top ten on Technorati’s emerging church blogs list. While I still apparently qualify as a B-List Blogebrity, I’m a far cry from the top ten list now, with a number of people catapulting to fame and fortune. Well, fame, anyway. Okay, that might not mean much either, particularly to the vanity-challenged. Since this list is one of the places I search for new blogs to watch though, it does mean something to some people… and I think that there are a few blogs out there that deserve more link love than they’re getting… ones which I appreciate and which I feel should be read more widely than they are.
So I’m starting a meme. A link-love meme. Oh yes, be afraid.
The idea comes from Mack Collier’s Revenge of the ‘Z-Lister’, and yes, it can work… at least for a little while, it can skew the Technorati rank we’ll call it “T’rati-Bombing”. And if it doesn’t, I don’t care that much… what I do care is to end up with a grassroots list of EMC bloggers whose blogs I might want to follow.
Here’s what we’re going to do. Think of between 3 and 5 blogs which you think are under-rated, under-appreciated, or under-valued. More people should be reading them, in other words. They need to be blogging largely on EMC themes and topics, and they should not be on the list of leading blogs on these areas, say 150ish+ links on Technorati. Got your list? I’ll wait. If you come up with 7, that’s fine… you can borrow 2 from someone else. ;^)
You’ll find below a list of blogs that I feel deserve more attention. Yes, some are compadres, but others are people I’ve never met, I just read their blogs. To participate, copy this list into a new post on your own blog, and add the names you have to the bottom of the list, and encourage others to do the same. Your list will be about twice the length of mine, and people who follow you will have lists three times this length. It could get fairly long, but that’s part of the point — each link will help boost the undervalued blog’s profile… and you might even get some link love from it too! Include these instructions (this and the preceding paragraph). When you’ve done that, leave a trackback or comment below, or link to this post so we can keep track of who ends up participating. Sound like fun for the weekend? Okay, here we go, in no particular order:
- Emerging Grace
- Robbymac
- Lily a.k.a. Erin
- Nathan Colquhoun
- John Smulo
- Who’s Next?
If you edit your posts in HTML, I’ll even start you off with the list code:
(If you want to pass along the same favour, add a second list between textarea tags: <textarea rows=”10″ cols=”70″><textarea>) If you don’t have a blog of your own, but still want to participate, just add the obscure bloggers you like in the comments below. We had a lot of fun the last time we tried something like this, so let’s see what happens. Any questions?
Done
Oh, and I just noticed Technorati is down right now, too… but it’s not our fault!
Woohoo!
I feel like I just got in on the ground floor of a multilevel marketing scheme. :)
I’ll try to get my list posted soon.
Ok, just got the list, plus my four additions, posted :-).
Took Ricks list added a few and posted! 0_o
Great idea. The list is getting longer!
glennhager.wordpress.com
Here’s mine. First I’ve been here. Nice site. :)
OK… that would be ADDITIONS not editions…. :-0
I have posted four new names from the list made by Rick Meigs :).
I posted my list….
I’ve put it up on my site with two additions. Great idea. Thanks
I don’t know if I’m doing this in order but I got my list from Matt and added 2 at the bottom on my blog
scratch that, I added a handful from others who had produced their list. I’m not sure if mine is complete but there were probably about 10-12 additions to Matt’s.
Wow! Thanks so much for the link! Can’t say that when I began reading this post I expected in the least to be included. Merci!
I’m actually at the coast on vacation this week. Since my Treo doesn’t blog well and the wi-fi is inconsistent here, I probably won’t get to this until next weekend – but I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring it. Peace, Lily.
Great idea – and I feel a bit humbled to have been ‘tagged’ myself
I’ve added the list to my blog at http://www.outofthecocoon.co.uk, and added a few relatively unknown UK-based blogs at the bottom.
Done. Thanks for this, looking forward to some good new reads!
Thanks for the technorati boost! I’ve added the list at http://www.revitalizeyourchurch.blogspot.com
A very unexpected surprise from my good friend Mark O Wilson. I’ve added it to my list at http://www.virginiatransplant.blogspot.com
Ok, I’m a bit simple on the techno stuff… what am i to do?? I’d love the love. :) And I’d give some too.
Welcome to Australia bloggers.
Maybe you said this, but I hope you compile all the links people add. This is great. I think average people’s blogs are the best – and they rarely make it high in the rankings. The problem is I never can find very many as a result – hopefully this will help. Great idea.
I’m pretty new to all of this so I don’t know anyone else, but I added my blog.
Fun. I’m a bit late to the party after being offline for a week – but I’ll get mine up soon!
i added to the list . . .
I followed the crowd and did the list :)
Hi,
I posted your list on my blog.
Sincerely
Guillaume Smit
http://www.emergingbracken.blogspot.com