Blogdex was an online resource for understanding hot topics of discussion in the

blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...

. The site offered a time-weighted list of links to online content cited by more than one monitored

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

in the recent past. Each link received a score based both on the number of different blogs citing it and the recency of those citings; the list thus typically features both popular oddities of the day as well as informative and/or controversial source material for current topics of public debate. Despite its explicit focus on blogs, it can be thought of as the original

memetracker {{Refimprove, date=June 2007 A memetracker is a tool for studying the migration of memes across a group of people. The term is typically used to describe websites that either: #analyze blog posts to determine what web pages are being discussed or c ...

, and the inspiration for later commercial sites such as

tailrank.com Tailrank.com was a site that provided a feed of content on the World Wide Web that was being discussed across the blogosphere. The site continuously scanned blogs that had been registered with it, and composed an index of "top stories" that had be ...

, Digg.com, and other

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

sites. As the previous owner of the domains blogdex.com, blogdex.net and blogdex.org,

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedi ...

offered the domains to

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

free of charge for use in this project. Blogdex then migrated from the original blogdex.media.mit.edu location to blogdex.net. Blogdex was created by

Cameron Marlow Cameron may refer to: People * Clan Cameron, a Scottish clan * Cameron (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Cameron (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) ;Mononym * Cam'ron (born ...

, then a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

student at MIT along with Elizabeth Wood, then a high school student attending the RSI summer program at MIT. Marlow now works for

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

. Blogdex has been offline since May 2006.

External links

Blogdex siteEarliest archived Blogdex page from blogdex.net domain
(May 2003; prior to that, blogdex.net was an alias for

Nupedia Nupedia was an English-language, online encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors with appropriate subject matter expertise, reviewed by expert editors before publication, and licensed as free content. It was founded by ...

)
"Tracking Bloggers With Blogdex"
''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'', Jul, 30, 2001 Blogs Memetics {{internet-publish-stub