How Does Guinness Figure Out The World's Most Prolific Blogger?
from the does-this-mean-I-have-a-record...-or-a-problem? dept
If you've ever read the Guinness Book of World Records, at some point, you've got to wonder how they go about verifying some of this stuff. I mean, how do they figure out who has the longest fingernails? I do remember the rather lengthy section of the (absolutely fantastic) book Road Fever, in which the author of the book, Tim Cahill, describes the process he and his driving partner had to go through to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest drive from the southernmost tip of South America to the top of North America. He makes it clear that the Guinness people take these things seriously, though I'd never put much thought into the specifics until recently.You see, the other day, I saw Karl Bode mention on Twitter that the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records apparently awarded the record for the "most prolific professional blogger," to a guy named Darren Murph who writes for Engadget. The award was apparently given out sometime last fall, though Bode just noticed it. The "record" was for 17,212 blog posts. Bode checked on his own work for BroadbandReports, and realized he had a few hundred more blog posts. I was pretty sure I'd done a bit more than that, so I checked. Turns out that I've written nearly 38,000 blog posts (it'll be there within a week or two). In other words, it appears I've written more than twice the number of blog posts as the supposed world record holder.
My first thought: Neat -- I beat the world record! My second thought: Perhaps I blog too much. And, finally, my third thought: just how do the Guinness folks go about fact checking these sorts of awards, anyway? On the whole, though, I'm somewhat amused. Of course, if they missed me, I've got to assume they missed a bunch of others as well, including (almost certainly) others who are more prolific than I am. So, can we do some crowdsourcing and see if we can help out the good folks at Guinness and figure out who else might be among the most prolific professional bloggers out there? Because, for something I had never even thought about a few days ago... suddenly, I'm curious.
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Ahem...
;)
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Re: Ahem...
>;-P
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;)
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Re: Ahem...
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It's OK, my 1 year old daughter can't read either.
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Sullivan.
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Yeah, Mike...
Egomaniac! :)
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Re: Yeah, Mike...
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What is a "Blog"?
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Re: What is a "Blog"?
Pshah! Like the journalists who look down on bloggers, I look down on twitterers as not sufficient! ;) Come on, blogging is *real work*, unlike Tweeting.
(Does that level of condescension sound right?)
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hmmm.. does that mean I own the copyright of the universe?
woot!
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Hey wait...am I a journalist?
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Guinness is full of it on several counts
Guinness also fails to recognize originality. Yes, you have to be creative to make news items speak to larger issues like Mike does, but what about those who create wholly original posts each day? Doesn't originality count for more than putting a spin on someone else's news story?
How do you rate photobloggers or videobloggers?
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Re: Guinness is full of it on several counts
Mike Masnick is one of the more prolific bloggers I read, but he still can't touch Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly, or Digby at Hullabaloo, or, frankly, any of several dozen very prolific political bloggers I read, and I'm sure there are some mommy bloggers who put these people to shame.
But the real question here is do you value quality or quantity? Who's the better author, Isaac Asimov or Thomas Pynchon? Barbara Cartland or Isabel Allende? Zane Grey or Ernest Hemingway?
Mike does a nice job of putting out a lot of quality product. Would acknowledgement from Guinness make him a better blogger? I don't think so.
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Re: Guinness is full of it on several counts
Guinness has never cared about quality. It's always been the biggest, or longest, or fastest, etc. And in general, world records are always, as far as I know, about measurable quantities, while prize awards may be about the subjective quality (decided by biased judges).
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Srsly, you should put up a paywall and stop giving all this great content away for free!!!1
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Not saying you're responsible, but you might want to double check your ad content. Drop me an email if you want the log.
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How To Get Into The Book
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/member/how_to_become_a_record_breaker.aspx
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I imagine that other very prolific blogs tend to be Anti-IP as well being that these bloggers maybe less inclined to think that content should be monopolized, when compared to many other informational sources, since bloggers tend to be in a category of people that simply give away more content than other informational sources.
BTW, can I get a world record for being the worlds greatest cynic.
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At least from what I understand
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Much like the tallest man ....
So give them a call, ask them to send someone out to verify the 38,000 posts and you to can hold a world record for a short while. You can then brag to your grand kids about it.
That is until they point out they did 40,000 blog post befor they were ten ...
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My first thought was your second.
Though I know every one of us LOVES your writings (well some love to hate it) I hope that you do not burn yourself out too much. We are seeing that happen too much lately with well known blogs, PJ at Groklaw, Sebastian et.al at Downloadsquad etc.
Stop and kiss the wife, hug the kids, and enjoy life not worrying about Guinness..
unless your drinking it!
Life that annoying thing between blog posts! ;)
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Mike Masnick
It is part of the sinister plan of the machines to take over the world. They have killed Mike and replaced him with a robot that continues to try to support free speech, privacy rights, and the US Constitution - and according to the government and the entertainment industry, these are the things destroying our society.
We must all rise up and...ouch! I think my keyboard just shocked me! I better get out o
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Honouring Mike Masnick
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Re: Honouring Mike Masnick
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And I write in binary.
Top that, Trolls!
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Guinness does not care. They are a profit-oriented organization and have realized that doing proper research will not be rewarded in $$$.
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the oldest man
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Ouch my bum...
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