Are birds social?

A reader asks: I am fascinated by all these social networking sites. How can I find a network where I can 'hang out' with other bird-watching enthusiasts?

We don't suppose you mean The Orioles, huh? Thought not. Read on for the answer...

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This Field Guide: Birds of the World group on Flickr has over 3,000 members and over 33,000 photos and substantial discussion. There are strict rules -- this is serious business.

You can submit your birding info, analyze your personal birding info, and analyze other public birding info in eBird. Registration is required.

Perhaps a teeny bit off topic, but really interesting: BirdJam is a company that integrates bird watching with iPods. With BirdJam, any North American bird song can be found within 15 seconds from the easily-accessed playlists organized by habitat and family. Call me a geek (okay, you didn't really have to do that) but I think that's really cool.

And sure, there are forums all over the place - like on Birder's World, for example.

Can't find the kind of network you want? Make your own! (listen carefully - this is really, really neato...)

You can create a full social network that you can customize and brand as your own. It's true. Check out Ning. It has a full suite of capabilities for photos, videos, discussions, blogs, privacy settings... you name it, Ning has it.

We can think of some really great ways to use this tool... anyone want to join a research social network?

Blog stats.

A reader asks: I hear a lot about how many blogs there are – one stat said a new blog every ½ second or some such number. But how many blogs are ACTIVE and how many get started and stall out? Also, while you’re at it, is there any way of ranking a blog’s “goodness”. Like some sort of ranking? And if so, what is that ranking based on? Man, I’m FULL of questions!

You ARE full of questions! Or something... (hee hee)

Here goes:

Steve Rubel pointed out a report recently from Microsoft. It says that almost 75% of Blogger's blogs are Spam Blogs or splogs. Yikes. That is a lot. And while the methodology is disputed by some, there is no arguing that there are a lot them - splogs, that is.

According to David Sifry (founder of Technorati) last October (new report in new format coming soon):

• Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
• Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
• About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
• About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
• The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
• Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.

We believe that there are substantially more than 57 million blogs. A year ago, The Blog Herald said there were 200 million. Wow. But there are few new reports about this and, frankly, it's just so hard to get accurate statistics when it changes by the minute and there is no one way to count.

How to find the good ones? Well, Technorati has a good tool. You do the search and then choose how much authority you want to filter by -- little, none, a lot -- and it narrows the search. We've found it to be very useful.

Or you could ask us. We'll help you find the relevant blogs you need. The best way we've found is to use great search techniques to narrow and then read, read, read.