Writing quality content and democratic diversion of web traffic towards that content are two different things. When the average informed netizen goes to look for ‘good’ content to read, stay up-to-date, there are very limited places they go to. Digg, Reddit and Techmeme are just some of those places. The alternative is their feed readers, but we’ll come to that later. The problem with the names above are that they’re pretty much always populated with content from the same blogs and journalism sites — like Techcrunch, Valleywag, Gizmodo — the ‘big’ names. It’s like small start-ups competing against the Microsoft’s and Google’s of the information world, only without the resources and funding.

If you’re thinking that it just takes time and good content for a small-time blog to hit it big, then name me 15-20 which have. Out of the number of blogs there are, 15-20 isn’t a big number. If you can, I don’t want to start to imagine the amount of time and the kind of promotion they would have taken to reach where they have. The whole point of the people power and interactive movement of the web (or Web 2.0 as we call it) was to make it easier for a person to form his/her identity — be it through social networks, blogs, or any other way. Unfortunately, the people who got there first are the ones who’ve benefited the maximum. Fits the analogy with Microsoft, doesn’t it?

Brilliant idea, pathetic execution

We saw this first with MSN Spaces and Messenger. The ‘gleam’ when someone updated their Space, prompting their friends to click through and hence, effortless promotion. In perfect Microsoft fashion, things were kept locked to in-house services. Cut to the present, and we see an almost similar thing with Google Reader. The only difference is you’re not limited to Blogger, and there were a million shouts of privacy complaints when it was launched. But the feature/concept itself is probably what we need to get the ball rolling.

Susceptible to abuse, the feature is the best way to promote your blog. Google Reader is one of the top three most used (online) feed readers, and hence, the best place to reach out to the people. If they like what they see, they can automatically subscribe (permalinks point to your feed when the feed is un-subscribed) to your feed, adding to the count. But there’s a catch here too … not every self-promoted blog has good content.

I think what we need is a social-news aggregation service, which consciously blocks submissions from blogs which rank in the top 10 of blog-ranking lists, to give the smaller ones a chance. Littl’uns is (was?) an awesome attempt, but suffering from lack of promotion (chicken and the egg, anyone?) and a submission/rating system. Attempts like bVibes however, show how anything not started by an already big player in this field is bound to disappoint.

No short-term solution

There is nothing that will immediately open the doors for the less popular blogs to reach more people. Quality control and self-promotion aside, the most you can do is participate as much as you can in other blogs, and build credibility — but that’s not anything you don’t know. We also need a boost from the established players. Maybe a Digg category, change in algorithm, or a separate service altogether — anything will do. I think it’s about time we differentiated between popularity and quality, regardless of the amount of time.