Tris Hussey on some folk waking up today and discovering what I’ve been saying for 6-9 months: we’ve reached a peak in blog growth, at least in the Western World, although oddly enough they’re calling it a plateau.

Yawn.

Technorati now reckons there is only 15.5 million active blogs.

BS.

Double BS even.

Technorati has NEVER tracked all blogs and they never will. They hardly even touch the surface on MySpace, they are woefully under represented in Asia with the exception of Japan, and even figures I was doing 2 years ago, using figures in some cases DIRECTLY from blog hosts showed that there was a whole pile of blogs out there that ain’t in Technorati.

But back to the meme at hand: that there’s some sort of plateau. Yawn again. It’s talk about something that doesn’t exist because the number is BS, that and do they really think that active blogs will continue at the same rate (or even know what a plateau is?): is it therefore is talk about nothing, and if you talk about nothing, doesn’t that talk become nothing itself?

Dave Winer gets its right: “Look for individuals who are changing things using blogs, that’s what’s important.” Mind you, counting them was worthwhile once upon a time, back when we will still trying to prove the worth of blogs and blogging, but we’ve passed that point.

Via Ben Barren, Twitter is no longer supporting SMS in Australia. They’ve since updated the original post to say:

“To clarify, we’re getting a new access number for Australia?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùas soon as we get the number, sms service will be back in action. We’re working on it right now and it’s a high priority.”

But 99 million dollar question: why cut the service off before putting in place the alternative?

For the record I don’t use Twitter on my mobile, when I was the damn thing never stopped beeping, but I know a lot of people who were using it on their phones, a lot of people who little doubt will be pretty pissed about this.

A quick update on the original list which can still be downloaded by clicking here.

Meg has run an update to the list + I’ve now got a feed for MadBull’s Annoyances.

New blogs include:

http://infosthetics.com/
http://www.skeptics.com.au/
http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/
http://www.business2.com.au/
http://www.thinkprospect.com.au/blog/
http://nickcowie.com
http://www.cantcoachthat.com/
http://the-riotact.com
http://altnews.com.au/drop/

I’ve updated the original list to include all these blogs, so it’s now longer than the Top 100, two reasons: I can’t be asked finding out which ones dropped off the list, secondly I don’t really want to knock anyone off it anyway, why start excluding people when this exercise is all about promoting Australian blogs.

Thanks to Meg for the update.

If you have previously run the original list in your feedreader, click here to get just the updated sites. Some feedreaders won’t install duplicates, but some do (Google Reader in particular), so best to be on the safe side.

Following on from Meg’s great Top 100 Australian Blogs list, my quest to become the Dave Winer of Australian blogging continues, I’m occasionally grumpy, I’m getting older by the day, I haven’t got the beard yet…I guess I can work on it….but on a more serious note, let me present The Top 100 Australian Blogs: feeds via OPML, set up for easy importing into the feed reader of your choice.

Click here.

The file has been tested in Google Reader + Bloglines and seems to work.

OK, there is one little catch! There’s only 98 blogs on the list, 2 blogs didn’t have feeds, and I did try looking for them at karencheng.com.au and blogcharm.com/sweets, if anyone knows where they are, let me know and I’ll update the list.

The list is in order as per the Meg’s list at the time of writing. It’s done manually so there’s no magical way to update it aside from me coding it so please don’t expect a whole pile of changes over time, but I will maintain it on occasion.

As much as I’ve crossed swords with a couple of Australian bloggers over the last week on the list, I still believe that despite all our differences that collectively we should be promoting blogs more in this country, and that’s to the benefit of all Australian bloggers. Hopefully expanding the reading list of some people (including myself) may play a small part in this jigsaw puzzle.

Enjoy.

Compliments of Search Engine Land, The Simpsons meet Google:

Full clip as follows:

The Australian licensed versions of the Gawker Media blogs, Defamer and Gizmodo have launched.

First thoughts: I’ll probably reserve judgment in full for now, to early to make a call on them properly, but naturally a couple of things:

1. They didn’t take lessons from Nick Denton when it comes to launching.

Defamer has 4 posts in total, 2 are welcome, send us tips posts, and the other two cover Big Brother and Mary. I’ve watched just about every single launch Nick Denton has done over the years, from rumour to actual launch, and he always stuffs his blogs with lots of reading goodies prior to launch, which obviously also makes sense: you want to capture first time readers when they visit by presenting them with a pile of interesting content that scopes across the broader range of interests: Defamer Australia looks and feels empty, because it is.

2. Where’s the Australian content on Gizmodo?

There’s a post on Gizmodo Australia that includes the words “we covered the xyz gadget last year”, which is interesting given the Australian version just launched. I’m not party to the syndication deal, but wouldn’t it make sense to at least try and localise some of the content, simple things like changing the words “we covered it last year” to something like “the US version of Gizmodo covered it last year here”, not only putting it in context, but also helping new readers? which of course begs the question: if most (all?) is just republished from the US site without change, why wouldn’t people just read Gizmodo.com as opposed to Gizmodo.com.au?

As I said, early days, I’ll give it a week then revist them after they’ve settled in, given it looks like they haven’t even gone close to settling in…I would have waited 2 more weeks then launched, once everyone was comfortable and the bugs in the writing styles had been sorted….but maybe that’s just me 🙂

If you’re looking for a good Web 2.0 cause to support, visit Mashable and sign the petition against Amazon’s decision to sue Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic). Lets see: Amazon opens its data saying “use it, please”. Someone does, they get popular, Amazon steals the best bits for Alexa, then sues the people who did nothing more than take Amazon up on its initial offer. Short story: Amazon, you suck.

Loren has the details on how you can submit stories to the newly launched MySpace News. Top story there currently has two votes, which begs the question: how long until someone starts gaming it? indeed, a couple of MySpace accounts would do it, and you can pick them up in bunches of 100-1000 cheaply at places like Digitalpoint 🙂

Meg has a great review on Tangler, Marty Well’s startup. I was part of the closed beta test since its original incarnation as a separate program, and its been remiss of me not to review it to date, I should have, we have far too few good things coming from Australia, and Marty is not only a good bloke (I’ve spent a little time with him last year), it’s also a clever idea. Tangler in now in open beta, check it out.

Arrington is hooked to. Good on him, because it’s a ripper of a game, if you haven’t played yet, click here.