Technorati emailed me today (for the first time since April 2007):
Bloggers,
Technorati has been tracking the Blogosphere for the past several years through our State of the Blogosphere study. This year we have decided to expand our study beyond the sheer size and characteristics of the blogosphere in order to hear more from you, the bloggers. How, when and why are you blogging? Is this a side business, full time job or something you do for fun? Our goal is to analyze the growth of the field as well as understand the people who make the space tick. Help us and join the study of the ongoing global conversation!
Click here to take the survey!
We hope you will find this survey enjoyable. It should take just 15-20 minutes of your time, and your responses are entirely confidential. Be sure to check back on Technorati in late September for a summary of the results.
Thank you,
The Technorati Team
This survey is one of the lamest surveys I’ve ever seen. Some of the questions require you to divulge personal information; others require only one response, although more than one was appropriate. And Technorati doesn’t give you the option of a self-hosted Blog, so if you use WordPress.org, or Movable Type, or any other blog system you install on your own server, you’re out of luck. The same question is repeated a couple times, which may be simply a flaw in the branching based on my responses.
They also ask how many blogs you have, but don’t tell you which blog you should be answering about. Some of the blogs I write for have only myself responsible for them, others have volunteer writers and contributors. All in all, the 2008 Technorati State of the Blogosphere Survey is a waste of time, and when the results are released in September, I’d not expect high quality analysis from Technorati staff members.
Update (7/30/2008 7:48pm EDT): The mailing list they set up to notify people about the survey allows any member to send a message to the entire list. Two messages so far, and I won’t be surprised if there are more. Amazing.
It is sad when authority sites like Technorati tried to do a survey like that which could actually benefit us all when the results were released but only if done right.
Secondly I would become incredibly angry if they had shared my email information will all the other people on the list. It would require more than an apology from them to fix that one.
/Mikael