The middle complementing the tail..

..Or the post which is just an excuse for patching together links.

Technorati has got out its state of the blogosphere report (hat tip: SophistPundit), with the usual long tail graphs. There's a lot of information there, in case you care about these things. The thing that struck me the most was what the writer calls The Magic Middle.

I want to go a level or two deeper than just thinking about the blogosphere as an A-List and The Long Tail -- for that's far too simplistic, and leaves out some of the most interesting blogs and bloggers out there.

This realm of publishing, which I call "The Magic Middle" of the attention curve, highlights some of the most interesting and influential bloggers and publishers that are often writing about topics that are topical or niche like [mentions a lot of topical blogs]

Well, there's nothing startling about this, except for that most people arent (I think) actively searching for that topical blog which they will love. If you have time, you can try out the technorati blog search sorted by "authority".

I regularly read a couple of topical blogs that are witty, informative and not too restrictive about their domain: Language Log and Marginal Revolution. Language Log's run by a group of linguistics professors from some top universities in the US, and you're sure to enjoy it if you've ever thought WordSpeak in the Hindu was decent. Here are a few representative samples. (Rajat, dont scream. I am just being lazy.) Marginal Revolution, ofcourse, I have linked to previously in a couple of previous posts. Its not quite correct to classify MR as an econ blog, there's all kinds of weird stuff that's posted there. There is a lot of stuff that goes over my head in that blog, but it still makes for great reading.

You might also want to check out TechCrunch, a beautiful looking blog that reviews new webapps (sometimes fancily called "Web 2.0" products). (Wanna know what makes something a Web 2.0 product? Check here) Kerabu is another great blog that looks at the web from an enterpreneur's eyes and is generally full of little wisdoms about what makes products click, UI, open source, the long tail, enterpreneuralism etc etc.

What? Ofcourse I have a job. You thought I was jobless?