And the Winner Is . . .

Thanks everyone for the support.

Johnny Plane – You’re right. This was a pretty ugly case of shoehorning a bunch of very different blogs into an awkward category. I mean, you’ve got an airline-focused blog on my end while the Kug really does appear to be more about food as the centerpiece of her travels. They definitely don’t belong in the same category, but oh well.

Of course, there’s the argument that any contests like these are problematic in general because they’re easily manipulable. I mean, 1,400 votes would have won and that is over a week where each person can vote every day. That’s not a true measure of being the best blog, it’s just a matter of having the best voting strategy and biggest network of friends.

Look at Jaunted – that blog is huge and very popular but it finished near the bottom, probably because they wouldn’t mention it or solicit any votes. Yet in a head to head popularity contest, they should have crushed everyone. Then you have a site like the Kug which has an Alexa rank of nearly 6 million (translation = tiny), but it can beat out sites like Jaunted handily.

So the point is, these things are fun and they’re easy to get wrapped up in, but ultimately they generate more traffic for everyone and that’s always good.