Poker Blogs Get Dissed

Last week I was having a conversation with a co-worker about many of the new services like digg, technorati and del.icio.us. One of the problems I have with some of these sites is that there’s a heavy, but unspoken, bias towards technology. For instance, here’s the most popular tags on del.icio.us right now:

ajax apple architecture art article articles audio bittorrent blog blogging blogs book books business community computer cooking cool css culture daily database design development diy download dvd education electronics entertainment film finance firefox flash flickr food free freeware fun funny game games geek google graphics gtd hacks hardware health history home hosting howto html humor inspiration interesting internet ipod japan java javascript language library lifehacks links linux literature mac management maps marketing media mobile movies mp3 music network news online opensource osx p2p photo photography photos photoshop php plugin politics productivity programming python radio recipes reference religion research resources reviews rss ruby safari_export science search security seo shop shopping social software tech technology tips tool tools toread travel tutorial tutorials tv uk usability video web web2.0 webdesign webdev wiki windows wordpress work writing xml

If you look at Google or Yahoo! searches it looks nothing like the list above. In fact, Google’s Zeitgeist lists the top ten searches in 2005 as:

1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter

There’s not even one single overlap between the two lists.

Now being techie myself it might seem that this bias works to my favor but my concern is that it leads to a lot of circle jerking. Many people (i.e. journalists, advertisers, etc) look at the above and conclude that all of those topics must be popular. In reality, they’re only popular within the group of people who use those tools. And the people who happen to use those tools happen to . . . be techies.

A couple of popular bloggers say something is cool so other bloggers blog about how cool it is (I mean if Jason Kottke or Boing Boing says it’s cool, who are you to say it isn’t?) and create diggs and del.icio.us bookmarks and then it becomes cool because it’s rated as “Most Popular” on those sites. The fact that 95% of the people using the internet have never heard of Ruby on Rails and think AJAX is a home cleaning product is completely irrelevant because del.icio.us says they’re popular.

So what the hell does this have to do with poker? Well, poker isn’t cool within the world of folks who determine what’s cool. Despite the millions of people who play the game online and the billions of dollars in rake it generates for businesses, the wider blogging community has pretty much tried to ignore [tag]poker blogs[/tag]. Take a look around at some of the most popular non-poker blogs and tell me how many affiliate ads you see.

So when the “cool” bloggers get together to decide who the coolest of the cool is, poker is not invited to the table.

[tag]The Sixth Annual Weblog Awards[/tag] (the 2006 Bloggies) is accepting nominations for the following categories:

• Best web application for weblogs
• Best Australian or New Zealand weblog
• Best Asian weblog
• Best African or Middle Eastern weblog
• Best European weblog
• Best British or Irish weblog
• Best Latin weblog
• Best Canadian weblog
• Best American weblog
• Best tagline of a weblog
• Best podcast of a weblog
• Best photography of a weblog
• Best craft weblog
• Best food weblog
• Best entertainment weblog
• Best weblog about politics
• Best web development weblog
• Best computer or technology weblog
• Best topical weblog
• Best glbt (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender) weblog
• Best teen weblog
• Most humorous weblog
• Best writing of a weblog
• Best group weblog
• Best community weblog
• Best designed weblog
• Best kept secret weblog
• Best new weblog
• Lifetime achievement
• Weblog of the year

So my proposal is that we all nominate poker blogs for the apporpriate categories. Fat chance that any poker bloggers will win but why not have fun with an open voting process.

What categories are appropriate? Here’s the ones I can think of some good fits for:

• Best American weblog
• Best tagline of a weblog
• Best podcast of a weblog
• Best photography of a weblog
• Best topical weblog
• Most humorous weblog
• Best writing of a weblog
• Best group weblog
• Best community weblog
• Best designed weblog
• Best kept secret weblog
• Best new weblog
• Lifetime achievement
• Weblog of the year

And here are some of my votes:

Best tagline of a weblog

BONUS CODE IGGY

Best podcast of a weblog

Lord Admiral

Best photography of a weblog

FlipChip on Las Vegas, Vegas

Most humorous weblog

Al Can’t Hang

Best group weblog

Up For Poker

Best community weblog

2+2

Lifetime achievement

Guinness and Poker
Tao of Poker

Any other votes? Seriously, go to the Bloggies website and cast your votes there. I wish I could be there when they’re going through the results and see all of these blogs that have never been on the Most Popular page of Technorati. 🙂

[UPDATE]: Great minds must think alike. Just popped over to my RSS feeds and found out that LadyFalcon who is subbing for Pauly posted something very similar.