Some enterprising grad students in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University just released a tasty little tidbit entitled “Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks.” The authors pose a simple question: Which blogs should one read to be most up to date, i.e., to quickly know about important stories that propagate over the blogosphere? Well, believe it or not, these (brilliant) researchers concluded that if you could only read 100 blogs to stay up to date, our humble site ought to be one of them!

The methodolgy as presented in the equation-laden research paper appears anything but simple. However, the desired characteristics included number of posts of a blog in 2006, number of inlinks from other blogs inside the dataset, number of outlinks to other blogs in the dataset, and number of all outlinks. Put all that good stuff in a algorithmic blender and out comes 10,000 Birds at #53 on the list. It should come as no surprise that we’re joined by fairly phenomenal company. Most of the big time political blog pundits, both progressive and conservative, are there, as are a plethora of blog celebrities, luminaries, aggregators, and miscreants, though I’m not naming names. I will point out that, while the bioblogosphere seems woefully underrepresented, the SEED Scienceblog collective made the list; they just happened to come in 45 spots below us!

I fail to see true value in this scattershot compilation but, then again, I’m not a genius in the Carnegie Mellon computer science department. If you want to be the first to know about critical news with many, many people coming in the cascade after you, you should definitely play it safe and subscribe to 10,000 Birds!

While I don’t endorse many of the blogs on this list, I will, in the interest of community, completeness, and karma, present the Top 100 blogs (for unit cost case and PA objective function) for your discerning consideration:

  1. Instapundit
  2. Don Surber
  3. Science & Politics
  4. Watcher of Weasesls
  5. Michelle Malkin
  6. National Journal’s Blogometer
  7. The Modulator
  8. BloggersBlog.com
  9. Boing Boing
  10. Atrios
  11. A Blog for All
  12. Gothamist
  13. mparent777
  14. TFS Magnum
  15. Alliance of Free Blogs
  16. anglican.tk
  17. Micropersuasion
  18. Pajamas Media
  19. BlogHer
  20. MyPetJawa
  21. Reddit
  22. Soccer Dad
  23. Nose on Your Face
  24. aHistorically
  25. The Anchoress
  26. AmericaBlog
  27. SFist
  28. TBogg
  29. HorsePigCow
  30. Why Homeschool
  31. The Daou Report
  32. Sisu
  33. MetaFilter
  34. Megite
  35. LAist
  36. Captain’s Quaters
  37. Shakesville
  38. Guy Kawasaki
  39. Lucy by Lucy
  40. Blue Star Chronicle
  41. Official Google Blog
  42. The Glittering Eye
  43. PrintScreen
  44. Read/WriteWeb
  45. Hullabaloo
  46. The Conservative Cat
  47. Phillyist
  48. The Social Customer Manifesto
  49. The Next Net
  50. Gateway Pundit
  51. Crooks and Liars
  52. Right Wing News
  53. 10,000 Birds
  54. O’Reilly Radar
  55. Cowboy Blog
  56. Business Opportunities Weblog
  57. DCist
  58. Creating Passionate Users
  59. Citizens For Legitimate Government
  60. What About Clients?
  61. Rough Type
  62. The Unofficial Apple Weblog
  63. Dans la cuisine d’Audinette
  64. The London Fog
  65. Bostonist
  66. Seattlest
  67. Austinist
  68. Indian Writing
  69. Power Line
  70. Firedoglake
  71. Blog d’Elisson
  72. Rhymes With Right
  73. Written World
  74. The Jeff Pulver Blog
  75. blog d’eMeRY
  76. Hugh MacLeod’s gapingvoid
  77. Catymology
  78. Hugh Hewitt
  79. Lifehacker
  80. jordoncooper.com
  81. Econbrowser
  82. A Socialite’s Life
  83. Gates of Vienna
  84. NevilleHobson.com
  85. Waxy.org
  86. A Life Restarted
  87. The Volokh Conspiracy
  88. See Also…
  89. Dr. Sanity
  90. Mudville Gazette
  91. www.saysuncle.com
  92. Privacy Digest
  93. Londonist
  94. Shanghaiist
  95. Catholic and Enjoying It
  96. Single Serve Coffee
  97. Jeremy Zawodny’s blog
  98. ScienceBlogs
  99. Basic Thinking Blog
  100. Scobleizer
Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.