Hugh’s putting in his two cents about “A-List Gatekeepers” over at gapingvoid. Basic premise (unless i’m missing something) is that every blogger is a gatekeeper and your blogroll and links are what make you a gatekeeper. Do I care, is this relevant, well yes and no.
I started blogging in January of 2002 while still in high school. At that point in time I had no idea of a hierarchy of blogs, there was no A-Listers or Z-Listers in my mind, only those who I had on my “Friends List” as LiveJournal refers to it. This which i’ve come to realize is effectively my blogroll usually ran about 60 to 80 people during my time using LiveJournal. I’d say at any given time I knew, and had met face to face, about 80% of those people. My posts would average 3-4 Comments.
Now nearly 4 years later i’ve moved on (or up depending on your view) and with WordPress i’ve included my “Daily Reads” into my blogroll, the Scobles, Gapingvoids, the Ben Hammersleys. Stuff that I find interesting, and wouldn’t mind passing along for the next guy who happens upon my blog and sees the blogroll.
Now that I realize I get 1 comment on a good day if i’m lucky with propstm.net, I can’t help but ask at what point do those “A-Listers” look down at the little guy and take a chance reading our content? I promise (I hope) my stuff doesn’t entirely suck. Technorati says i’ve got 3 blogs linking to me, and sad to say one is simply this same blog at a my original address, before I had this domain (Argh! technorati can’t fix that!). The gates are there, the feeds exist, now if I could just get confirmation that the world sees and maybe cares what I write then I would know i’ve made it to the Blogosphere and not made a wrong turn somewhere.