Monday, September 26, 2005

Blog Numbers Likely Inflated by Spam

We keep hearing about the size of the Blogosphere increasing like crazy. Technorati talks about it doubling every five months. However, what's not being said by all the bloggers who are blogging about blogging is that a growing number of these blogs are spam.

We've heard from a company which processes a large number of blog posts that about a quarter of the posts they see are spam.

Have you ever clicked the "next blog" link at the top of this page (and most other Blogger blogs). How many of the blogs you come to are for online casinos or inkjet cartridges. It's really quite amazing how much spam has moved into the Blogosphere in the past few months (my observation, not based on any particular metrics).

I think it would be great if the main players in the industry -- GYM, Techorati, Intelliseek, Six Apart , etc. -- put their virtual heads together to find ways to systematically slow down the wave of spam before we're up to our eyeballs in it. Blogger's flagging (to allow individuals to notify Blogger about objectionable content) seems like a good idea. But it remains to be seen how well it works.

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