Science blogs

Nature has just published the 50 most popular science blogs. I never knew that so many academics actually blogged. Its quite interesting that they decided to rate blogs maintained by academics separately from other writers. The way they measured and rated these blogs is obviously questionable and open to interpretation.

They looked at how many at the technorati ratings of the blog. Technorati rates a blog depending on how many times the blog is linked by other sites in the last six months. Obviously, if your blog is around or longer then it is linked more. also, it does mean that if your blog isn't linked but is read avidly by non-techno-savvy- bloggers (like me) then it doesn't get ranked.

Its quite interesting to see how many people blog and it seems to become an important part of your CV especially if you apply for publishing jobs. Hublog, written by Alf Eaton, now a nature publishing group employee has a science blog which might have won first prize but is no longer a scientist and therefore doesn't qualify in this rating.

Anyway, I am amazed at the number of people blogging. I somehow always saw a blog as space to put your thoughts down and let friends know about interesting things and your activites, but its only now struck me how people are using it to dissipate information. Amazing!! I dont think I would read a lot of blogs like Hublog because of how technical it is but some of the other blogs on the list are easy reading.

I also noticed that the top blogs all have short posts usually linking up to something. Its not like the author has given his or her opinion or even commented on the article they are linking to, which in my opinion is as good as just posting a list of interesting articles numbered 1 - 10 without anything else.

My interest in a blog is always more when I get some idea of what the person is thinking about. Is it a good article or bad, why? Anyway, today I have also discovered technorati!!!