Yesterday I received the following totally unsolicited e mail
___________________________________________
Dear Conortje author,
Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it a 7.2 score out of (10) in the Personal Blogs category of Blogged.com.
This is quite an achievement!
We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.
After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 7.2 score.
Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!
Sincerely,
Amy Liu
Marketing Department
amy@blogged.com
http://www.blogged.com.__________________________________________________
I am not sure what bothers me more – the rating of 7.2 or their apparent excitement at such a mediocre score. They seem to be damning me with faint praise I never asked for. In fact I had never even heard of them before this e mail.
I must admit I find it somewhat difficult to muster up any pride for a measly 7.2. They could have at least given me some warning and allowed me time to study and prepare for the test. I’m sure with a bit of effort I could have stretched my grade to a 7.5 Although, if I stand back and look at their criteria I actually think they were rather lenient on me.
Frequency of updates – Nobody is more surprised than myself that I am still writing anything on this blog. Every post is one more than I ever expect to do.
Relevance of content – relevant to what exactly? Let’s face it, I write about nothing. Nothing is either completely irrelevant or vitally relevant to everything. This is a major philosophical point which I intend to never write extensively about some day.
Site design – Design? Oh dear, I wonder does a signpost to Purgatory qualify as a design concept?
Writing style – Seeing as I don’t have a style I fear this is where I may have lost most points. Although not having a style could very well be a style itself. Hmm, maybe if the whole mechanic thing doesn’t work out for me I could become a philosopher…I clearly can’t become a professional blogger with only a 7.2 rating. I wonder if they do recounts.
Conortje 
72% is a good grade, a first class one in some situations. Do you get higher than this in everything else you do?
Mr Perfection.
I want to be
lovedmarked! 😦OSF – well I don’t like to boast…
alan – you can have mine if you like. Honestly!
I’d give you 10/10.
For the right payment, of course.
LOL 🙂 If you were going to mark the letter, what criteria would you use?
jovica – how much are we talking about?
jen – compassion? sensitivity? purpose? 🙂
Oh, only a token fee…
Given your amazing choice of Christmas reading, something in that line will more than suffice!
“I wonder if they do recounts”
I wonder if they’re American…
did they offer you money? ask them for money……
i hate to tell you this, conor, but Amy Liu graded my blog 8.5
i rock.
I remember one such telling me what level of reading skill my readers required to read my blog. I think I was high-school which p’ed me off but the worst on that grading system was Grade 2 – the level of a 7 year old.
I’m still waiting to hear from Amy.
XO
WWW
jovica – well that is very easily arranged 🙂
rua mac – they can only be!
manuel – €7.20?
laurie – you were robbed – nothing lower than a 9.8 for you!!!
www – hehe seriously? Who goes around this this stuff?
How horrifying to receive an unwanted rating from some jobsworth in some totally irrelevant organisation. Can’t Amy at blogged.com find something more useful to do like tearing wings off flies? Who gives a fairy f*** about some arbitrary rating from nowhere. All that matters is whether the punters love you or not. Personally I love you, you little cutie you.
I think Amy Liu might be Lucy Liu’s sister.
Yay! It’s, like, six degrees of separation – I know someone who has received a letter from someone who is the sister of someone who has kissed Matt LeBlanc.
I knew I’d get to kiss Joey Tribiani one of these days. Now it feels like I have….
hmm….how YOU doin?
lucy lui lol
if you don’t know her then she doesn’t matter (to quote my dad yet again).
i’d give you 12 out of ten and an A plus star or whatever they give tip top stoodents these days. I’ve read relevance of content twice and my head still hurts, you’re too clever for me!!
Damn, Jen already had my idea!
Mark them back. The cheeky blighters…
nick – well I didn’t care one bit what she had to say until I came to 7.2 and then inexplicably my interest shot up hehe. You’re quite the charmer today aren’t you 🙂
travelling – That’s it – she has always felt she was in her sister’s shadows and thus strikes out at poor unsuspecting bloggers. So when is the Travelling/Tribiani wedding?
towny – I like the sound of ‘if you don’t know her then she doesn’t matter ‘. I am going to start using it, even in cases where I do know them! The trick to seeming clever is to just confuse people into thinking you are. Works a treat 🙂
newbie – you’re right. Maybe I’ll write Ms Liu an e mail this weekend…
Actually, I think I remember reading somewhere that the Blog Awards are judged on very similar criteria to Lucy Liu’s!
Just think of this as the Golden Globes to February’s Blog Oscars!
haha I submitted my blog to a few review sites just for shits and giggles. Some I got awards for and others I got ripped to shreds. When it all comes down though, it’s just some other blogger’s opinion. Whatever 😛
Giving your blog a review like that without you even asking for it, good grief! I guess it’s what we ask for writing a blog at all but still.
maybe if we keep leaving our witty and inane responses here, your number will go up. contact Ms. Liu! demand a recount!
and yes, she really did send me an email too. it was about a year ago. i’m sure my numbers have plummeted since then; i think i peaked way back in early ’08.
Haha good job they don’t rate commenters! Just hope they don’t follow my link, I’d be lucky to score a 2 with all that blithery banter.
I’ve never heard of them either, although they appear to be quite massively ranked by Alexa and Google both. Clearly they’re a bunch of tossers, as I was only given a 7.6 despite being an obvious 11 or 12. Perhaps you’ll get a rating bump now that you’ve advertised them.
i know people who know people who can reach out and touch them, sugar…the bastids! xoxoxo
Nick: ” Who gives a fairy f***…”
I am gonna get some serious mileage out of that phrase
Conor, 7.2% is great. I got a 78% grade in my first college assignment before Christmas and I was Alexandra weeping over Beyonce X winner happy about it, especially as I was thinking of giving up the course a few weeks earlier.
I think some bloggers end up with a false sense of ego, that their words are the only ones that matters. Your blog has still avoided that aspect of the ego ruining the writing. Your blog is still funny, still consistent and it is so obvious that your readers love what you think and say. I have never met you but like other readers it’s almost like we have simply by the way you write.
My favourite blogs, after 3 years writing mine, are still yours and Enda’s and the pop ones I read the most. I miss Sinead Gleeson’s still. Awards are a load of baloney (even tonight’s Golden Globes!), I think a lot of well known Irish blogs are completely overrated but if praise or awards makes people write and connect with each other that’s all that matters.
alan – I’ve always preferred the gloden globes to the oscars though…
breigh – one man’s meat… I suppoose
laurie – nonsense, you are at the very least as good as ever
baino – be ready just in case 🙂
isabella – 76 is still better than what I got 🙂
savannah – fabulous, I’ll be touch … 🙂
rua – he does have some great ones our Nick
david – alexandra weeping over it – love it 🙂 Thanks for that great comment! I’m still amazed that anyone would want to read what I write, I like to think people are just being kind.
How can you say you don’t have a writing style? I still think about your trip to the US of A/Abercrombie post at least once a week. You’re witty and self-depricating, honest and charming, articulate and clever…oodles of style. (Found my way to your blog via Beth over at Shenanigans, btw)
Yipee! So how are you celebrating?