In what must be the softest headlining story of the month, Mike Arrington’s story of how Digg users are having a look at a Digg clone called Mixx has made it to the top of Techmeme.

I have nothing to say about this story around Digg / Mixx, except that as a community grows in size, the number of assholes who populate it will, of course grow in number as well; what was tight knit and collegial gives way to anonymous ass-hat-ery, and that’s just the nature of the web.

Now, this isn’t really saying anything against the Techmeme algorithm, and why it should choose *this* story to headline itself, and not say, the seemingly more “important” story by the San Francisco Chronicle detailing how iTunes is launching the careers of some would-be-unlikely musicians.

Nor, for example, is about Mike Arrington wanting to write this piece.

Its about how at the beginning of the day, there were, maybe two bloggers who had wrote about it, like new media law dude Rob Hyndman and Bloggers Blog.

Now, at the end of the day, we have quadrupled that number.

Why? Well, if there was something intrinsically interesting or newsworthy about Mike’s piece I might say “its because its intrinsically interesting or newsworthy”. But because it really *isn’t*, I am led to believe the *only* a big reason they’re writing about it is because it *is* the headlining news story.

That is, they want to comment on the most “newsiest” story of the day, or there’s a desire (subconscious or no), to have your blog attached to the headlining story.

[I now speak from personal experience on both feelings which can be oddly profound at times]

Irrespective of the actual reason, I think it shows in a funny way, how powerful Techmeme is. Sure, we all read it, and yes, this is a weekend, but depending on what the headlining story is, it can really influence what bloggers write about.

I mean, let’s move this story down to the bottom and let’s see how many of them — “us”, really — write about this non-event. I would probably say “not a lot” and that’s being charitable.

As an aside, and I don’t know if there’s any way to prove this, but this also proves to be an interesting case example of how powerful Techmeme is relative to other aggregators. This fairly soft story is *also* headlining Megite, for example, *and* the Tech section of Blogrunner. Not having followed on the other aggregators, I do wonder if what happened was this story being fairly innocuous, hitting the Top of Techmeme, having other bloggers link to it, and then propelling the story to the top of other news aggregators.

Bottom line? Techmeme is our beloved aggregator, but for tech bloggers anyway, I think perhaps, that it has an inordinate amount of power. Or, rather, if its merely natural (as the most beloved of tech aggregators), then perhaps I never really appreciated how much power it had over us to begin with.

So I’m a tech blogger of the new media persuasion. And there’s a conference that many new media bloggers are going to — perhaps you’ve heard of the one Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis is putting together, TechCrunch 40.

Now, I’m *not* going to TechCrunch 40. Its not because I don’t want to (because I’d love to see what Hammer has to say about new media). Its because of a lot of things really. I can’t get time off my day job as a medical resident. My parents and my wife’s parents are out of town, so no babysitting help for my wife. Flights to SF aren’t cheap. And so on.

Translation? I don’t really do *this* (points to blog) as a living — as a sole thing that I do.

So, does not flying across the country to go to a tech conference where “major” tech bloggers are going … does that not make me a “real” blogger? I mean, if we use Jason Calacanis’s recipe for being an A-list blogger, going to a couple conferences a month (actually the original post says “per week”)Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and not me is part of the prescription, right?

Clearly then (at the risk of dredging up that horrible blog convo that won’t go away) I’m not an A-list blogger, but does not going to major conferences not make me a “real” blogger?

I don’t really know the answer to this, except that I used to think that whatever notion of the “kind” of blogger I am rests in the perceptions of you — my readers. And while its true, we are judged by the content of our posts, its *also* true that the promotion of your blog is an equally important activity.

And the promotion and marketing of one’s blog is often determined by how many people you know, and how well they know you; and its only made a whole lot easier and more powerful when those connections are made in person.

I’ve been blessed with being able to meet some pretty interesting and relatively important blogging folks in my time blogging. And I don’t know where this blog would have been without those relationships.

But if you never met any people “live” though, and made all of your relationships virtually — well, *could* you, and still be regarded a “real” blogger? I suspect the answer is a hearty “yes”, albeit that its probably harder.

Harder to make connections, harder to really report on what’s actually happening, harder to convince people about who you are, and harder to make who you are memorable. Because all you’ll really have is your writing, and your ability to connect online.

Which, I suppose, is what we all started with, and are eventually, judged upon.