Hopefully one day I can be included in the Top 10 but surely I won’t be able to defeat you, Darren :)

I originally started teaching Blogging in courses because so many people required a web presence but were ‘techically challenged”, the dynamicness and simplicity of blogs were a a great solution.

Tony Hogan

Worlds Best Guitar Blogger

Thanks Darren. It looks like this post has had the effect of making us look snippy and snarky, which wasn’t the aim. Rafe is known as one of the politest bloggers around Ozplogistan (Australian political blogs). If it’s any use to you, I’ll repeat what I wrote over at Duncan Riley’s site (he got really annoyed by this post) in the hope of providing clarification and hosing everyone down. My reference to snippyness refers to Duncan, not you – he did get reasonably cranky.

Catallaxy is a group blog. One of our staffwriters wrote that observation based on information provided by Tim Blair. Yes, it was probably a tad on the snippy side, but there are eight of us, not one, all with different takes on the world.

I write for Club Troppo as well, one of the blogs I note that you’ve visited. Similarly, Jacques – who is also only one of a number of writers – is the only other libertarian (besides me) at Club Troppo.

For my part, I suspect what we’re seeing in the blog world is the same division that happened to newspapers and novels a century ago – a division into ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’, a division into audiences based on markerting and an audience based on chewing the political fat.

FWIW I still suspect that Tim Blair would be Australia’s most popular blogger, in part because he doesn’t divide his energies among several blogs and has a huge US readership. That doesn’t mean I somehow think less of those who – to use Jacques’ phrase – are into more full-on capitalism, like the gentleman from ProBlogger. Both he and Tim make a very nice living from blogging. We at Troppo and Catallaxy, by contrast, make pocket money and pay our hosting fees :)

What it does highlight is the need to come up with a metric that does measure popularity accurately. Sitemeter and Technorati are helpful in this respect, Alexa less so because many people refuse to install it (it behaves like spyware on Unix and Mac machines, and is banned in many workplaces).

So save the snippyness (it looks like we’re square on that score by now); elitism exists all over the place. We at Catallaxy (and Troppo) showed how it can emerge even in the blogging world, and if it’s any consolation it’s not something I care about. Nor, for that matter, does Jason Soon, Catallaxy’s editor. He truly does not care – as long as people show up in the comments and say something interesting, he’s as happy as a clam.

Great list Meg.

Now I have a challenge. To try and break into this list!

Now try and compile one of these lists for Americans – that would be a competitive list!

I even blogged about it a few days ago!

Spooky timing :)

Which all in all bodes well for our country and its vibrancy. Go the Aussie Blogger. I have just started blogging in a very well trodden sector..hahaha
where the space is somewhat crowded…but hey such is life…Fun….

Mouahahaha!!!

That would be sensational!!

We’re based out of Sydney, Australia. Our blog just started a couple of weeks ago, but we’re definitely climbing the ranks pretty quickly. Right now all three writers are Australian, but we will be adding some international ones shortly, so I suppose we might not count :-(

http://freelanceswitch.com

Many thanks for your post about the index.

It’s definitely a work in progress, and I’ve already had some great input. I’m also getting some help on automating the updating process as we speak (more about that later), but that’s certainly going to take a lot of the “grunt work” out of updating the list.

As you mention, it’s not an easy job identifying all the Aussie blogs out there, so to your Aussie audience – please DON’T be shy about sticking your hand up. If I can get the process automated, then there’s no reason why we can’t get a “top 200″ list, or more, going….

Thanks for your support :)