David L. Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, keeps tabs on more than 45 million weblogs. Here's his advice for cracking his site's Top 100 list.
1) React quickly. Commentators like Andrew Sullivan and Michelle Malkin draw megatraffic with immediate rebuttals to A-list pundits at The New York Times and Fox News.
2) Make your posts easy to read. Italian comic Beppe Grillo broke into the Top 10 by setting his key points in boldface.
3) Link, link, link! It's counter-intuitive, but the busiest blogs in Technorati's index are those like InstaPundit.com that link prolifically to other sites. Linking works because most bloggers reciprocate by sending their readers your way.
4) Optimize for search engines. Put the name of your blog (even if it's just your own name) in the main URL and the title tag of your site. On Technorati, identify your blog with search topics, like "politics" or "sewing."
5) Post, post, post! Chinese actress and director Xu Jinglei has the most popular blog on the planet. At first we thought it was a glitch in our system, but it turns out she's a real-world celebrity who makes time to post almost every day. What's your excuse?
Trick Out Your MySpace Page
Matthew Price started MySpace Hacks to "make Myspace do things that it's not supposed to do." These are a few of his fave tools and tips.
Customize your design
There are thousands of free tools online for tweaking colors, adjusting layouts, and embedding videos. For God's sake, use 'em - the default design on MySpace blows. Just avoid garish scrolling graphics that crash browsers and burn eyeballs.
>www.myspacehacks.blogspot.com
>www.myspacenow.com
>www.myspacer.net
Add text messaging
Text for Free lets people send messages to your cell from your MySpace profile. Enter your number and service provider, and the site spits out a line of code that you can paste into your profile. No more having to disconnect from MySpace. Ever.
>textforfree.net
Share your Flickr pics
MySpace profiles can't display more than 10 photos. Luckily, there's a free download that generates a dynamic PNG file that features your six most recent Flickr uploads. When your visitors click a photo, they're taken directly to your Flickr library.
>flashandburn.net/flickrtools
Locate your visitors
Wanna know where all those babes scoping your profile are from? Use Geo Visitors, a Web tool that detects visitors' whereabouts and uses their locations to build a Google map.
>digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors
Add more friends to your main page
MySpace's standard settings display eight favorite friends on your profile home-page. The MySpace Custom Friend Space Generator lets you rework the field to show off up to 40 of your BFFs.
>r4wr.com/friends
Improve Your Amazon.com Picks
Rate items you like. Sure, it feels good to trash a book you hated, but telling Amazon what you enjoyed will generate better recommendations - and the more, the better. On hold with the cable company? Rate a few items. On a conference call? Rate a few more.
Remove bum purchases like the Princess Diaries DVD you bought for your niece last Christmas. Under your personal store tab, select Improve Your Recommendations. Uncheck the Use to Make Recommendations box for items that don't reflect your tastes.
Squash bad leads. Amazon doesn't know it's on the wrong track unless you speak up. Click Not Interested and it'll stop insisting you'll love the latest Dave Matthews CD.
Add any item you want to your Wish List and Shopping List, even if you aren't ready to buy it - at least Amazon will know your preferences.
Dig deep into the recommendations and you might find better ideas. When browsing DVDs, for example, filter down to sub-categories like Animation or Cult Movies for more pics in your favorite genre.
Post in a Hurry
Imitation is the sincerest form of blogging. A free app from Eyebeam called reBlog lets you easily republish other people's posts. Here's how it works.
1) Download the software from www.reBlog.org. When you upload the appropriate files into your Web hosting account, it will automatically create a reBlog homepage.
2) Go to your spanking-new reblog page (the url might be something like www.yoururl.com/reblog) and paste links for RSS feeds that you want to monitor.
3) Click "Item List" to scan new posts. If you see an item you want to republish, select it, add witty commentary (or not), and click "Published Feed." Voilà! You're a one-person Boing Boing.
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