A Thinking Award: Who'da Thunk It?

Cerebrally speaking, the pressure is on.

Today I was honored to received

The Thinking Blogger Award

bestowed upon me by Dr. Anonymous part of a rather unusual and weighty meme. Thank you, kind Doctor. I am quite speechless.

What's another meme to the Queen of Memes you might ask?
What's interesting is that this meme was started by Ilker Yoldas over at The Thinking Blog -who dissected, deliberated and finally disavowed the meaning of memes altogether.
And then started another meme.

Since I'm typically right-brained, and proud of it, I think I may need a bit of java to stir the delicate balance of left/right into just the right frame of mind to comprehend this logic. So I read the great thinker's dissertation on the validity and purpose of memes (gosh! It's working already. Just winning the award has made me use four-syllable words)
I dug a little deeper through blogmire to discover that Ilker's frustrating epiphany was filtered through the blogchain with research into Technorati rankings.

Set my pencil skirt to thinking......Does Mimi Writes really deserve  a ranking of 19,374 out of 2.5 million? How did I get here? My other blogs are nowhere near that number. According to Ilker, the recent 2000 Bloggers Project collage that skyrocketed linkage for well......at least 2000 bloggers!.....has caused "link pollution" adversely and unfairly affecting your Technor ranking - and mine. 

Technorati is not happy and admits their numbers have been a bit skewed, shall we say? I wasn't able to participate in the 2000 Blogger Project  simply because they wouldn't accept an altered blog photo; in my case, the real me you see in my profile with an added "cartoon" effect and half of Mimi's mug. I think they should at least let me share a square with another blogger whose face is wholly challenged. Or at least offered a 1/2 price rate. Don't you?

Web strategist Jeremiah Owyang  whose face did find its way onto the collage in this article fully admits he doesn't deserve his 1,999 Technorati ranking and wants to earn it the old-fashioned way: writing quality content. He's asked to be removed from the collage. Eureka! I wonder if they'll let me take his place. He writes," The 2000 bloggers viral collage is artificially inflating the economic authority in our ecosystem."
Hogwash.
Even though we think we know how Google and Technorati  dole out hierarchical kudos, who the blell really knows? That jury is still deliberating. And who is to say a large majority of those sharing collage squares don't write blogs of substance?
I'd like to think bloggers can have the best of both worlds. Any strategy that propels my site into the direct line of vision of scores of new blogs I might otherwise not have bumped into in the blogosphere is fine with me - unproven link pyramiding be damned.

I agree that it is about content. It is also - realistically - about exposure, and with 70 million blogs afloat I say ingenuity counts for something. There will always be spoilers in the mix who game the system and devalue the original intent. But those few shouldn't shut down possibilities for the rest of us. I'm going to keep writing as usual and trying to do the right thing - Paying It Forward - a worn out phrase that seems strangely appropriate these days in the blogging world.
My brain thought all that to think this: I did earn my ranking without "link contamination." I suspect Mimi Writes rose (or sunk, as it were) to the bottom rankings (rising, as it were) because of the Peace Globe landslide last year.  

Who woulda thunk it? A blog-to-blog-word-of-blouth Day of the best of the best in the blogosphere. Good writing. Passionate articles. Grassroots initiative and old-fashioned teamwork. If all that good karma unexpectedly returns in increased (decreased, as it were) Technorati rankings then that means more exposure for your blog and more importantly, for the intent behind the cause - which is to unify.

In reality, it matters not. The powers-that-be in Techno's rank measurement squad have already found a way to filter out suspected linkage farms. So there.
Never fear. Read Zoli's page,
  Steve Rubel's initiative for a great explanation and discussion on this controversy.

And for these reasons, I will be participating in THIS meme and the Z-list as well in an upcoming post. Both have intrinsic value that has nothing to do with a link race. The Five Blogs That Make Me Think  meme encourages well...thought. The purpose of the Z-list meme which began on this blog, is to showcase lesser known bloggers, find great blogs and give them the opportunity to connect with other bloggers in similar content arenas. We'll call it The Blellow Pages.

I'm through thinking now. That hurt.  A*hem clearing throat) I hereby accept Dr. A's nomination and tag the following people as winners of the coveted Thinking Bloggers Award.

They all invite me into their worlds and teach me much. I am grateful.

Congratulations! Five Blogs That Make Me Think -

1. Lizza - I Am Woman,See Me Blog! (Philippines)
2. Prometheus - The Moving (Middle) Finger Writes (India)
3. Maryam - My Marrakesh (Morocco)
4. Iamnasra - A Window Within Myself (Oman)
5. SGT DUB in Afghanista

If you choose to carry this meme forward, remember to tag only those bloggers who stimulate your cortex....or something like that. Please make sure you pass the rules to the blogs you are tagging.
The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think

2. Link to this post  so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award'
with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Peace!