In a blogosphere where anyone can proclaim themselves the ruler...

I'd like to begin with a small comic, which I believe nicely sums up the attitudes/personalities expressed on blogs by their owners:

(Thanks goes to xkcd.com for this comic)

Owning a blog makes everybody feel empowered! I feel full of power right now. I'm writing something that could potentially have authority/influence over somebody's opinions or ideas. You could agree, you could disagree, but when all the water boils down (I had to toss some cooking lingo in), each blog is its owners atomic instance of power, separate from everything else in existence.

So, then, who's the ruler of the Blogosphere, if everybody is feeling empowered, and declaring themselves as the one?

Technorati says its them! According to Technorati, they are assuming the position of being at the center of the Blogosphere.

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We also help social media publishers to find the people formerly known as their audience. And they all converge, as a result, on Technorati.

We're proud of this position, of course, but also humbled by the responsibility it imposes.

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This is how blogs MAKE MONEY. They start with a small idea that doesn't currently exist (or is not quite popular yet) and they capitalize on it and declare themselves as the winner. Actually, when you think about it, this is the oldest business model in existence.

Every four months, Technorati presents a quarterly report (smells like a business to me), which has several pretty graphs with the "Technorati" watermark all over it, and some obvious observations are extracted from some data. The thing is - they're only the best and the authority until somebody has pretty graphs, obvious observations ANNNNND free popsicles. Then that will be the new self-declared authority. Ok, well, it might take more than free popsicles, but I hope you get the idea. On a side note ... Technorati got the Law of Large Numbers wrong. Just thought I'd be a good blogger, and point out the inaccuracy.

Technorati did make a good observation, though. Tags! Social tagging, Wiki tagging, graffiti tagging, laser tagging... each new Web 2.0 platform allows the author the ability to easily categorize and label their works. This works wonders for SOE (I hope you're still not looking this up?) for your blogs. It helps you and other bloggers reciprocate. But wait, wasn't everybody their own center of the universe?

AZ Blogging says the ruler of the blogosphere is ... wait for it .... reciprocity! ... Wait what?? I have to comment and reciprocate on other peoples blogs, rather than just be an atomic entity? THIS RUINS EVERYTHING.

But seriously, I wholeheartedly agree with AZ's post! It's why planetary blog posting rates have ballooned to 17 posts per second (collectively), and the number of blogs to over 70 million. Like they say, you might not have time to return every single comment, or read every single blog post, but this is how all the magic starts, and it's why Technorati is able to capitalize on you, me and the blogosphere.