The e-mail said this:Congratulations,,,,Barf Stew, was determined to be one of the top resources about your topic, and has received our Top 40 Paranormal Blogs award!....
You can see your name amongst our winners here at: www.onlineschools.org/top_paranormal/#Barf_Stew
Winners were chosen through a scoring system that included internet nominations, which came from your reader base! You can let your readers know you won by embedding the badge code
This was the link of the Home Site http://www.onlineschools.org/ .
If you went to the above link - it gives the story that I will relate to you in a nutshell.
But, before the concise version of the story - let me tell you what I found at Alexa, a website rating service, (while no website rating services are probably gauging things 100% - the consistency of the data does add up to meaningful information in a relative way) to see if this `Award' was being issued from a website that was even read by anyone. Here's that data link - http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/onlineschools.org# .
The nutshell, is that someone has an awesome marketing plan for marketing a website name (onlineschools.org) and most likely implemented that plan earlier this year as their growth has been phenomenal. Indeed, if you go to this page - http://www.onlineschools.org/awards/ you will see a listing of virtually every blog category niche which bloggers exist within - and for all of them - blogs have a chance to be on this Top list - and to proudly display the `badge' which, of course, gives you an option to go to the home site OR the Top Paranormal Blogs list (in my case).
And, certainly, online schools, are hot searches themselves. But, ultimately, IT IS AN AMAZING RESOURCE FOR BLOGS.
But, I distract myself - back to bloggers; - at the above page you can find the Top 50 Cat Bloggers - or - the Top 30 Skateboard Bloggers - or - the Top 20 Deepsea Fishing Bloggers - you get the idea. About 90 categories of Top Blogs; with the ParaNormal Blogs DEAD LAST on the page (right after the Top Atheism and Top Pagenism Blogs - at the bottom of the `School of Science' category - a category that included Insect blogs and Star War blogs too).
So, my blog - Barf Stew - was part of some grand marketing plan that was succeeding very well for the marketer of the brand name onlineschools.org. Hmm. Still, was this barf or stew - just what was the criteria.
So, I wanted to dig deeper for how the blogs were selected within each category and found this:
The Top Paranormal Blog Awards are brought to you by Online Schools.
The award winners for this category were announced on August 23, 2010.
Nominations for next year's 2011 award have already begun.
This award highlights the very best blogs to learn about the Paranormal and all things related on the internet that were nominated by the internet community, and is designed to thank the authors for their contribution toward the world wide web we all use & enjoy.
Awards candidates are found by one method:
- Anonymous nominations that are open to the internet community
This allows us to generate a candidate list that is based upon what the internet determines as being good, original content. We stay away from a voting system because the only information that gives us is how well a site's readership can click a button.
After a list of candidates is compiled, we then filter the list to ensure that each site qualifies for the category. We then give the list to be scored by our panel of 5 judges. Each judge rates each blog across 20 different attributes, including content, frequency of updates, amount of advertising, length of posts, and readibility. This then provides the site with a ‘subjective’ score. These ratings are combined into an aggregate total for the 5 judges. The amount of nominations are also converted into a score, and this score combined with the aggregate score gives the blog its final rating.
The ratings are then compared for each site within a category and awards are given out to blogs in the 99% percentile (meaning the top 1% of blogs receive awards).
(http://www.onlineschools.org/top_paranormal/nominate/ -- use this link to nominate Barf Stew and your favorite paranormal sites for 2011.)
But, online school.org was even smarter than this - with this dialogue they created the connection of bloggers to REAL online schools that they are promoting at their home page:
We find and award the best blogs in various categories, aggregating them into top lists. These days countless individuals blog about topics they're both passionate and knowledgeable about - creating a topical knowledge base that's far more expansive than one is exposed to in a typical classroom. Think of these lists as schools, the individual blogs as classes, and the posts as courses, and the bloggers as professors.
(Btw, don't get us wrong, we still believe in the value of a traditional education!)
So, what about all of this is Barf or Stew? And, what is the bottom line?
To me, here's what is Barf IMO. First, the Top 40 Paranormal Blogs was 42 - and if we were the top 1% - that would mean a listing of over 4,000 paranormal blogs was evaluated by 5 judges on multiple attributes. Yeah, it's Barf alright. ---- And, most likely the listing was conjured up on a google search frenzy over an hour or two or three. It would be nice however if indeed multiple judges picked the final listing (something beyond confirming)- and - based it on some criteria (something beyond confirming).
But, there is Stew here as well.
Take human ego, create a listing to stroke the ego and gain free exposer to a good brand name; do the above over and over until the Top content Bloggers Listing actually becomes a real resource for BLOGS. Quite frankly, it's brilliant marketing and my hat is off with a deep bow.
Finally, I started to take a look at the Top 42 listing of paranormal blogs (ultimately they probably didn't know where to put Barf Stew I bet) - for the year of 2010. I'm about 1/2 way thru it (found only one WTF listing) and in addition to finding 4 - yes - FOUR of the writers on The C Influence represented - I found these other cool websites that have great content like Barf Stew. Enjoy them too.
http://www.bigfoottimes.net/
http://paranormalstories.blogspot.com/
http://zimbabweghosts.blogspot.com/
http://paranormity.com/
Remember, you can click the Award to see the listing of the Top 42 Paranormal blogs of 2010 - it's in the sidebar.
Lastly, perhaps this award gives an opportunity to expand a bit on what Barf Stew means - and, it's positioning as a blog.
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Barf, frankly, is my personal opinion on lots of stuff that passes as `news' in many forums; - be it political, or, paranormal, or, on occasion, `studies' that `prove' one thing or another via science or scientific method. -------- Because I think it is Barf - to me - it is worth Stewing about, and, sharing the view to a reader. But, don't think that Barf stories are not worth reading and that Stew stories are worth reading - they all are worth reading.
Below is the closest I can come to a definition about the terminalogy of BS.
Barf - corruption in government, time travel pictures - anything where the reaction is OH Come ON. (BS spreads spew.)
Stew - big science ideas, new innovations or thinking, - anything where the reaction could be - that's interesting.
Barf Stew - is where something diversionary to normal consensus is worth considering intellectually.
See you tomorrow - tell a friend about Barf Stew today; the award winning blog.
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