Listen to a variety of voices by checking out Blogs.

Blog, a contraction of ‘web’ and ‘log’, it’s almost always written by one person.  It’s that person’s take on the world, heavy on the opinion.  It can be a website, part of a website or hosted by a site with lots of blogs where each is editorially independent.   If it’s part of a web site for an organization selling a product, service or idea, the editorially control rests with the organization.  Doesn’t mean don’t read it, just evaluate what you read based on where it’s coming from and who, if anyone is paying for the opinion.

In its purist form, blogs allow people to share experiences and ideas; meet interesting people.  Friends and relatives followed my daughter’s blog about living in China.  Twenty-somethings and older blog.  I wish more teenagers would.  I read an article just this morning that they don’t want to make that time commitment.  They’d rather text, tweet or status update in 140 words or less.

Time is limited.  So, how do you find a blog of interest to you?   Flashback to my Technorati days.  If you’ve never heard of it, don’t despair.  It’s a search engine for blogs.   I used the technorati site in late 2005- 2006 [online old school] to ‘listen’ to chatter about my media relations clients and current topics & trends.  Technorati was an up & comer, winning a Webby Award for Best Practices in 2006, behind Flickr & Google maps.  Technorati was in good company.  Every New Media conference was talking about the site as the ‘only’ search engine for blogs.  In those days, search a term on Technorati and you’d get lots of interesting blog entries.  It could be an overwhelming cacophony at times, but they sorted by popularity & gave credibility points, which helped sort results.

In September 2009, Technorati was ranked [by ComScore] as the 5^th largest social media.   But technorati jumped the shark with a complete re-vamp in October 2009.  Now, they track fewer web sites = fewer search results. A recent search of ‘genealogy’ returned one result: a professionally-written movie review from the Huffington Post.  I adjusted my search term to ‘Family History Research’.  The half-dozen results were posts from Huffington Post, Eurekalert [paid placement] and PhysOrg.com.  The independent blogger has lost its voice on technorati.  Technorati has lost relevance.

So, how do you find blogs of interest with a mix of paid & independent?

• Type your interest into standard-bearer search engines: google, bing, yahoo, they deliver a list of web sites.  Now, add the word ‘blog’ to your search term, you’ll get blogs as well as articles about the best blogs on the topic.
• Twittorati.com Yes. this is from the technorati folks.  This twitter co-op shows you the top 100 blogs [according to technorati, comments above apply] as well as tracking the tweets of popular bloggers.  It lets you see comments on trends from thought leaders.  More of a tracker than a search engine.  Easier to navigate.

Blogs are nice to have in the mix of your digital life.  Travelogs are a personal favorite.  As a breakfast connoisseur, blogs about breakfast places give our breakfast club new places to try.  Living vicariously through the adventures of others is one of the great benefits of my digital life.