Meta-meta-meta-meta-blogging: tying the knots in the blogosphere

A long, long time ago, when I first started thinking about blogging itself (as opposed to just doing it) and first discovered blog carnivals, I wrote this post called meta-blogging, in which, among else, I wrote this:

While old Big Blogs are themselves centers of the Universe from which all opinion radiates, small blogs have a different strategy. Large blogrolls, lots of blogwhoring, commenting on each others blogs, linking to each others posts - those are all strategies to gain one's visibility, with a consequence of new knots forming. These new knots are much larger than knots of Big blogs. Several dozens of blogs in each knot keep linking to each other all the time, and the knots get bigger and bigger, connecting to each other, forming a really extensive web which only tangentially includes the Big Old Ones.

I remembered this not only because I am in the meta-blogging mode after ConvergeSouth, but mostly due to some stuff I have read recently on the blogs of students who are taking the blogging class with Colin McEnroe (check his sidebar for the students' blogs and give them some comment-love).

For instance, one of their recent assignments is to read and comment about Lance Mannion. There are already several interesting commentaries on NileBlog, Metablognition, Don't do the crime if you can't..... (and here again), Semper gumby, Jean Dublog, Bill's Blither and I can't help it if i'm lucky.

My blog is certainly not big, but it is huge compared to some who get 7 hits per day, yet DESERVE much more. I want to help new good blogs get some recognition. I have, from relatively early on, tried to link to such unknown little gems of the blogosphere as much as I could, pretty much as I just did above. But just posting a link is not that much help because my blog is not that big.

So, I have recently started other strategies. For instance, I occasionaly do 'linkfests', i.e., posts that contain a number of links to interesting recent posts on a number of blogs, for instance, recent examples are linkfests of female bloggers, science bloggers, political bloggers, North Carolina bloggers, medical bloggers, education and academic bloggers, philosophers, journalists and expert-bloggers, some miscellaneous blogs and some more .

The strategy is to have, in the same post, links both to some of the big blogs (e.g., Leiter Report, PressThink, Pharyngula, Legal Fiction, Pandagon, Majikthise, Shakespeare's Sister, etc.) and some of those newer smaller blogs that deserve wider audience. I am counting on the big bloggers tracking down the link to my linkfest via their sitemeters or search-engines, to look around and check out the unfamiliar names. Hopefully, they will like them, bookmark them and, one day soon, will link to them and bring them huge traffic and lots of new readers.

Even more direct method (which, sadly, bypasses me and my sitemeter) I have done occasionaly is to post links to cool little blogs directly into the comment threads on big blogs.

For instance, just very recently, I thought that Amanda would really like this post from Pearlswine, a blog with nice satire (also a blog I discovered via this post on this blog from Colin's class), but only 17 visits per day. I posted a link in this post on Pandagon and Pearlswine's sitemeter exploded with Pandalanche - and it did not even neccessitate Amanda linking to it in the body of a post. I am hoping that people who like Pandagon will also like Pearlswine's satire and will keep coming back for more.

I did the same thing with this post from Nonsense, another one of Colin's students. That blog gets only 12 visits per day. Not any more, as I have posted a link in a comment on this post at PressThink. I hope his sitemeter is happy with JayRosenlanche and will result in a couple of more regular readers!

Thus, I am trying to help new people join the existing 'knots' of the blogosphere, as well as perhaps build new knots. What do YOU do when you discover a pearl of a blog that nobody appears to know about?