MSN BlogBot a new service from Microsoft will aggregate content from hundreds of thousands of Web logs and index that content based on which Web logs are most popular and credible. Defined by whom exactly?
I generally find these services useful, its good to get a snapshot of what’s popular on the Internet. But ‘god is in the details’ as the saying goes. The diversity of thoughts available on the Internet is one of its biggest strengths. As with conventional media this will simply be a large corporate entity editing what we see. Already on Blogdex a large component of the items are from the dead trees news outlets of Grauniad, NYTimes, BBC and Washington Post. They are always going to be able to out-publish individual bloggers.
Don’t get me wrong, services such as this are much need to sift through the literally billions of sources. However, editing the edited is a one way street.
I would like to see services that can be controlled themselves. Maybe an Amazon style ‘if you liked this, then why not try this’?
Also what if one of the most popular Blogs was about how crap Microsoft are or how great Apple are..would these still get up there?