Needed: A "Meh" Button on StumbleUpon

I have a suggestion for the developers of StumbleUpon, which will improve their product tenfold.

StumbleUpon is a lovely tool. It gets you around the net easily, helps you discover new sites and interesting bits of information and it's really good for killing time when you seemed to have run out of sites to browse.

Of course, the Thumbs Up-Thumbs Down rating system adds to the fun. StumbleUpon is supposed to give you a personalized experience of the internet. It's not perfect, but it works. You like a site - vote up. You hate it and don't want to ever see it - vote down.

Many a times, though, I get to a site that I don't like, but I don't dislike either. It's simply, well, a "Meh" site. It's neither hot nor cold, neither funny nor sad, neither moving nor annoying - it simply does nothing for you. It's meh.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term: according to Urban Dictionary, Meh is the verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders, or a statement that suggests indifference - to be used when one simply does not care.

I suggest a new button for SU - a Meh button. This way, I can express my opinion of the site quickly and easily, and tell StumbleUpon to bring me better links from now on. It's not like a thumbs-down, but it allows me to say something about the site (Hey, I'm too lazy to write a review every second) and not just Stumble away for the next one, keeping SU wondering if it did a good job.

So, what do you think about that? Yeah, I know, I know. Meh.

What are the Top Blogs of the Net, Really?

Now there's a question for you - what are the top blogs on the net?

TechCrunch published an interesting list - the top blogs and news sites on Google Reader. According to the data there, BBC, Google News and ESPN are the top three sites. I was surprised for a second there, to see Google News so high up. After all, it's not a very efficient news service, and the information there isn't very helpful. Then again, it might be a default choice that a lot of people just didn't bother to remove - exactly the same as the MSN homepage in every IE.

When you look at Technorati's list, there are no "official" news sites - only blogs. According to Technorati, the leading blogs are Engadget, Gizmodo, and Boing Boing.

Bloglines' most popular feeds show a different picture altogether. eBizMBA gives another ranking (for August 2007). You can't trust data from Alexa, naturally, so that leaves us with a lot of nothing.

Popularity contests can be won in many ways. There are different ways to look at data, and many times it's twisted to the favor of the one presenting the data. These lists are interesting gimmicks - but nothing more - and they shouldn't be taken too seriously.