Mirror, Mirror, on the Web, Who has got the biggest head?
According to the egoSurf Top50 , I do, for the time being at least. I even appear to have a bigger syndicated ego than the truly great grandfather of search journalism, Danny Sullivan, though a slightly smaller one than someone named LawMoose.
egoSurf is a new vanity search/reputation management tool that allows you to check your placements on Google, Yahoo, del.icio.us, or Technorati in relation to the number of links back to your blog(s) or URL(s).
If a name is mentioned in, or associated with a piece of writing or a blog document, “ego points” are assigned to that name. The more verifiable references found, the more ego points scored. Apparently, my name is mentioned a number of times in a number of places, likely found by reading between the by-lines. My new found and totally befuddling big-headedness is entirely due to the nature of an environment that allows 2000 word musings to be instantly syndicated through live-feed RSS or human-edited copy/paste routines.
Writers will vanity surf much in the same way an actor will preen in all mirrors. Reputation management is part of the job. It is amazingly gratifying to confirm I do in fact, have a big ego, even if that knowledge is known to go straight to my head. (I’m gonna be mega fun to work with for the next few months eh?)