Tell them what you think

I received the following message from Technorati:

Since 2004, Technorati has been tracking the Blogosphere through our State of the Blogosphere study. The goal of the study is to create a complete snapshot of the activities and interactions that make up the Blogosphere by asking you, the bloggers, to share some information about your habits. The survey includes questions like how, when and why you blog. Is this a side business, full time job or something you do for fun?

Please feel free to send this link to other bloggers you know. And be sure to check back on Technorati.com in November for a summary of the results.

I urge all my blogging friends to participate in the survey.

Why do I say this?

Well if you look at the Technorati site you find the following categories:

Technology — Business — Entertainment — Lifestyle — Sports — Politics — Videos — Blogging

And none of thse really caters for my interests.

And I suspect that any blogger who finds my blog interesting will also feel that there are huge gaps in that list. I’m interested in history, culture, society, religion. I’m interested in politics to some extent too, but I don’t expect to find that under headings like “politics” on sites like Technorati (and Digg is even worse). I’m interested in political principles and policies, but not in personalities, or in political infighting, and who’e in and who’s out and who matters.

Among the things they ask in the survey is where you get information from, and I had to enter “Books” under “Other”.

The people who compile these surveys seem to be either technogeeks or celebrity cultists, or at least to assume that everyone who reads or writes blogs is one or other of those things. And I suspect that most of my blogging friends, like me, are neither of those things. So if all my blogging friends participate in the survey, it might help to restore the balance, and show that there are other things in the blogosphere than they are plugging. They gave a long list of celebs, and the only one I recognised was Barack Obama.

So if you have a blog, and if you blog about the humanities, or something other than technology and tentertainment, go here:

http://research.opinionguru.com/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=A17275

and take part in the survey — and urge your blog readers to do the same.