We're Number 8,312!

As you've no doubt seen elsewhere on ScienceBlogs, Nature posted a little story about popular science blogs that included a list of said blogs, including a link to yours truly (tied with Deltoid for 11th in their list by Technorati rank order.

My ranking has actually climbed slightly since then (#8312 accoring to my most recent vanity search), but I had noticed the quote ranking of #8,365 last week, and I have to say, I'm absolutely gobsmacked to be in the 99.98th percentile of blogs ranked by Technorati. It's sufficiently surprising, in fact, that I need to resort to British slang.

OK, granted, about 44 million of those 47 million blogs they track have about six posts and have been dormant since 2004, but still, that's an intimidating looking number. Especially when I look at my blog and find dog pictures and inane World Cup commentary...

Of course, I can put the whole thing in perspective by noting that I spent the weekend with a big mob of my close friends from college, most of whom probably aren't even aware that I have a weblog. To quote David St. Hubbins, that's probably too much fucking perspective, but it's an all-or-nothing business...

(The Nature list is hardly representative, as I know of at least two string theory obsessives who get more traffic than I do, but it's cool that they mentioned me. I wonder if I can count that as a citation in my tenure materials?)

More like this

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"I wonder if I can count that as a citation in my tenure materials?"

I'm gonna put it on my CV for my next committee meeting. Or maybe not.

I'm vaguely astonished to be in the top 1%.

I used to have a humorous web-button (when such things were faddish) on my original home page proclaiming my site to be the recipient of a "Top 98% of the Web" award. I sort of never expected it to be quite so ironic.