Martin Nuemann considers the quality issue at 9rules. He also suggests that 9rules is a “link farm”. I don’t agree. Sure, www.9rules.com has an amazing PR of 8 and I’ve always taken the view that it was more of a blog ring than blog network, but not a link farm, after all, if it was a link farm 9rules members would all be showing a blogroll of some/ all of the blogs in the network (which would be indicative of a link farm), they don’t. The question then becomes: what is the best way to describe the 9rules model? I’m tempted to suggest blog commune, and given Scriv’s political bent he’d probably half like that, but I thinking blog community is a much better description, after all it’s not just about the links, 9rules has always been big on community and fellowship and the site as a portal is geared towards this. Sure, you could argue for blog directory as well, but directory doesn’t encompass the social aspects: blog community just fits perfectly.
Tags: 9rules
HaHa – now that I think about it the term “link farm” in relation to 9rules was I think written by you at one time – so it must have stayed in my subconscious when writing this post. Thanks 😉
Funnily, when you were with b5 and 9r attacked you guys you used that term.
I think the term “link farm” fits rather well for non-members as the public discussion these days is pretty weak and (sadly) resembles myspace (i.e. ‘what are u listening too’, ‘hello all’, ‘how many push ups can u do’, etc). Frankly, there are better places to go if you are browsing for readable content these days. 9rules went from an exclusive group of great blogs and added 300 mediocre ones. There are attempts in the member forms to setup a voluntary peer-review system but who wants to tell 300 folks their writing isn’t worthy? I sure don’t. I wish them luck with growing the “community” but I don’t see it working out.
Gah! Did I really just write 300. That’s hardly fair. It is more like 50-75. Nevertheless, a large and increasing fraction of the total.