Opinion: Helping out the B-list, C-list and Zero League blogs

There's been a lot of talk recently about "A-list bloggers" -- blogs which seem to net a large portion of the blogosphere audience, either in specific niches or across many niches. The talk invariably turns to why it's so hard to break into this group.

A lot of people equate "A-list" bloggers with quality blogs. I think this is a mistake. Many A-list bloggers are undeniably good at what they do (write, opine, report, comment) but others are A-listers by virtue of the number of inbound links they've picked up from other bloggers, and their appearance in others' blogrolls -- which is often the result of how long they've been in the blogosphere, rather than being consistently good quality. Unfortunately, blog search and aggregator/popularity services (like Memeorandum) propel this trend, by giving high rankings to A-list blogs, even if the posts are of questionable quality. A common scenario are A-listers that are pushed to the top of the rankings, even if they just excerpt another blog, or report someone else's news, without adding any commentary.

So where does that leave the B, C, and Z list bloggers? Unfortunately, in a lonely place. Good writing will take them only so far. If they get noticed, they might be blogrolled by a few people, or linked every now and then, but unless they scoop a major story or two (think Bush National Guard memos) or spend a lot on promotion (Huffington Post) they're destined for the minor leagues -- or the zero league, which is my way of saying that no one reads or comments on their posts. Use the "next blog" feature in blogspot.com blogs and you'll see there are quite a few of the zero-league blogs out there.

But here's my idea to remedy the situation: Create an aggregator service like Memeorandum that deliberately excludes the A-listers, and use an algorithm somehow does a better job of getting original commentary -- perhaps by excluding quoted text, or copy that matches items in Google News. This could also be incorporated into search -- an "exclude A list" button. The idea would be to highlight unknown or lesser known commentary that is just as worthy of being highlighted by the A-list luminaries.

A quality post is a quality post. Why should it be excluded because it lacks inbound links or a few years' experience?