Peter Lindberg sent an email to Observer regarding today’s ranking of the most important blogs in Sweden.
Daniel Nordlund at Observer replied:
“The background to our ranking is that we have come to the conclusion that blogs as channels are so important to monitor that we have added the most important ones as part of our monitoring service.
The list that DN today published is the list that we have started to monitor, in other words, the ones that we have graded as being most important. At the same time we are convinced that the importance of blogs will increase and in turn also monitoring of them. Because of that, looking forward, we are going to invest a lot in this area.”
Does this mean that my blog now is officially considered a proper medium and that all sorts of PR people will start pitching me now (that has already started but not by anyone from Sweden)?
Anyhow, the upcoming blog debate in Stockholm on Monday, Bloggforum.se is promising to be a historic event, considering that all top 6 on the list of the most important blogs will be in the panel, and 7 of the top 10. That should be an incentive to participate in our debate.
UPDATE: The top ten list has been discussed a lot during the day in the Swedish blogosphere and the main issue has been, not surprisingly why these ten have been chosen. Many don’t have comments activated and may not even be considered blogs. Johan Norberg, PJ Just Nu, Niklas Lundblad, Dick Erixon and Peter Lindberg have all chosen not to have comments. I still consider them blogs, although Erixon probably would be more blog-like if he had permalinks on his posts.
Some critisism to the list today has been around the fact that there are other Swedish blogs with possibly more readers than these ten. So why has Chadie for example been excluded? I think that Observer have ranked the blogs not only on number of readers but also considered:
1. Focus – are they trying to influence readers with a clear agenda?
2. Platform – are they writers that already have influence? If Göran Persson started blogging tomorrow morning he would be the most influential blogger before lunch, simply because of his position. Many of the names on the top ten list already are influential people in media and/or politics.
3. Topic – these blogs are all focused on media and politics and other blogs that comment on a broader variation of topics may lose out in terms of impact.
And because of that, my guess is that Observer thinks that some Swedish blogs may reach a lot of readers, but in regards of their influence over public opinion, they are not influential enough to be on the list.