The Worth of a Blog

A Brazilian blogging friend recently told us that, last year, there was a service offered in Brazil’s burgeoning blogosphere (estimated at more than 300,000 strong, most using Blogger) where someone would leave a comment on your weblog—for a fee. Not just a “me too,” or “right on,” or trite comment (see Fred First’s chuckler on this, where he discusses comment anxiety), but something of substance.

Apparently that didn’t fly, because now there’s another enterprising Brazilian movement afoot: “I’ll leave a comment on your blog if you leave a comment on mine, and in less than a month you’ll have five thousand comments…” Comment CHAIN LETTERS?

Gosh. I guess I have a different idea of what makes someone’s writing worth reading. We were more than a little amused, then, to dicover we’d been listed in Blogshares. Our blogworth is apparently $2,002.51 as of 6:00 pm today. The value seems to be calculated by, among other things, inbound links, which will surely exacerbate the “please blogroll me” pleadings. If we add the Blogshares logo onto our homepage, we’ll apparently be “verified” and able to trade.

An interesting measure of one’s existence. Insider place blog trading, anyone?