Blogebrity

Blogebrity was an internet hoax from May of 2005 that nevertheless managed to have a real-world impact upon the blogosphere.

The website purported to be a sneak preview of a magazine that would be launching in the fall of 2005 which would focus upon the lifestyles of bloggers. The most controversial aspect of the project was an inclusion of a list of A-list, B-list, and C-list bloggers.

This list proved to be very controversial among bloggers. Many of the bloggers named on the list discussed acknowledged their status on their own blogs, often using a tone that mocked the concept while still expressing pride in their own inclusion. Many considered it absurd to dedicate a glossy print magazine to the lifestyles of such non-glamorous (and in some cases, non-photogenic) subjects.

One reason that it received such scrutiny may be because there not yet a reliable metric for measuring the popularity of blogs, akin to Nielsen ratings, Bestseller lists, or Box office weekend champions. While sites such as Technorati.com or Alexa.com provide some indications of relative popularity, there doesn't yet exist an authoritative ordinal ranking of blog popularity. (Part of the problem is that many blogs do not have their own domain, and many ratings services do not track popularity at the subdomain level.) For many of the bloggers name-checked, this was the first time they had been included on such a list, and they reacted (some say overreacted) accordingly.

In June, Contagious Media (the group behind the infamous 'Black People Love Us' website) revealed that the project was merely a parody, created by Kyle Bunch, Jeremy Hermanns, and Greg Johns, as their entry in a competition to determine which hoax could generate the most web traffic. By targeting bloggers for attention, many bloggers ended up linking to their page, helping their prospects in the contest.

Although Blogebrity only ended up in fifth place, because of its subject matter, it ended up receiving attention among opinion-makers and early adopters disproportionate to its actual significance.

Even though the list was largely subjective in construction, and was designed to gain attention rather than to provide objective information, it still is useful as a snapshot of who the most popular bloggers were in May of 2005. Although many of the bloggers on the list would disagree about who would really qualify as an A-lister, there is a consensus that the list does represent many of the most popular and influential figures in the blogosphere.

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