To be an influential UK blogger you have to be from the mainstream media....

...or so it would seem from this list of the UK's Top 20 influential bloggers. After the top 7 or so (by and large BBC bred or fed, or ex BBC blogerati - which with their scale is not surprising) it seemed to start to go rather wrong to me (without going into the whose ins and outs, but I thought I could name at least 5 that are more influential / bigger trafficked / more quoted etc than some on this list ....TechCrunch UK for starters) so I looked at the method of calculation:

NowPublic examined statistics in each of these categories from Alexa, Compete, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Quantcast, Technorati, YouTube, and various other blogs and sites, to create a list of the United Kingdom’s most visible and connected individuals. It then narrowed the list to 20 by analyzing and documenting individuals’ presence and popularity in each of these channels, applying a weighted scoring system, determined by the strength of specific traits held in each online community.

And then doubled the score for anyone from the mainstream Meedja organs, it seemed to me

Sadly they didn't go into more detail - how do you rate a Techmeme appearance vs 1,000 Facebook friends for example? Clearly the science of understanding new media influence is in its infancy, in that respect its a very good start and a basis for discussion and argument (no doubt its aim ). But you do get the feeling that its skewed just a tad towards online columnists, despite the evidence that this sort of model's influence is fading - and wtf has putting holiday snaps on Flickr got to do with influence??

Maybe we need a Campaign for Real Blogs (to be sponsored by the namesake for Real Ale, natch)

(From the Broadstuff Bah humbug these grapes are all sour Dept )

Update - to the people who hit the 1 star rating - I'm sorry if my message is unpopular, but the influence algorithms these guys used were demonstrably very poor (hint - just check Alexa and Google links for the top blogs registered here against say TechCrunch UK, Guido Fawkes, or even our blog) and probably give the MSM a feeling of comfort that doesn't exist in reality.

To those who hit the 5 rating, the cheque is in the post