Popdex, along with Blogdex and the Daypop top 40 was one of the first generation meme trackers for the blogosphere, ranking top blog posts based on linking activity. The folks maintaining this set of first generation tools seem to have collectively lost interest in them, after seeing them supplanted by social ranking tools such as Digg and Reddit.
But I was surprised to see Popdex become a wholesale spam farm. It's eerie, there are even "archives" supposedly going back in time, showing "results" from 2004-2006. The only thing is, these pages are just more spam. Popdex didn't actually used to look like that. Interesting to see the choices for the spam anchors on the sidebar and the post titles.
I wonder if the former owner of popdex just let their domain expire, or if they had a more active role in this.
Comments (9)
i used to love these sites, tailrank is kind of similar.
i've thought this type of aggregation could help develop a new social bookmarking site before its userbase took off.
Posted by tom | July 12, 2007 8:06 AM
Posted on July 12, 2007 08:06
I've found one that's still worth using, BlogsNow.com. It's not so pretty, but gives me exactly what I want: the links that people think are worth blogging about.
Posted by William | July 12, 2007 8:42 AM
Posted on July 12, 2007 08:42
Hello,
I'm the original creator of Popdex.
Here's the short version:
Popdex was always a fun side project. It started taking up too much of my time, and wasn't bringing in enough dough to maintain it full-time anymore.
So I put it up for sale.
The new owners are/were InfoSearch Media (might be doing business under a different name now), or they might have re-sold it to new owners, who knows.
Once it was sold, to their credit they maintained the original version which quite admittedly had some spaghetti-code parts to it, so I can't blame them for putting the kibosh on the orig. version.
I had no more influence in what they did with the site/domain once it was sold.
Posted by Shanti B | July 12, 2007 11:57 AM
Posted on July 12, 2007 11:57
I hope you got a lot for your soul there, Shanti.
Posted by Anonymous | July 12, 2007 12:07 PM
Posted on July 12, 2007 12:07
@Anonymous - how am I supposed to know what they'd do with it once it was sold? lol
Posted by Shanti | July 12, 2007 12:24 PM
Posted on July 12, 2007 12:24
I believe a soul loss would only occur in a sale to AOL, MSFT or Yahoo! ;-)
Posted by Shawn Honnick | July 12, 2007 12:33 PM
Posted on July 12, 2007 12:33
Hey Rich, you're on NPR today -- 25th anniversary!
~L
Posted by L | July 13, 2007 6:59 PM
Posted on July 13, 2007 18:59
Yeah..... I do have to admit that popdex/daypop influenced me to start Tailrank.
Hopefully it can help fill that niche.
We're also working for some more functionality for Tailrank which I think will make things even better.
If only I had more time :)
Kevin
Posted by Kevin Burton | July 16, 2007 10:49 PM
Posted on July 16, 2007 22:49
Hello Rich,
Have been seeing your name everywhere these days 25 years on. Was noted in last night's London newspaper with a 25 theme.
Wishing you well from across the years and miles...
Steve George
London
Posted by Steve George | August 3, 2007 4:29 AM
Posted on August 3, 2007 04:29