Interview with Todd Andrlik

Last week we posted about the rise of Billboard 100-like lists on the Internet. One of the lists we pointed to in that The Power 150 came to be

Bite: First off, tell us how you came up with the idea for The Power 150.

And: The idea for the Power 150 came from a unique combination of inspiration and boredom. I discovered Marketingfacts.nls list of the top 100 Dutch-language marcom blogs and was really impressed with its resourcefulness. Then, during a week-long Christmas vacation, I was bored and decided to attempt an English-language version.

Bite: How long did it take you to get the site up and running? What was the process?

And: From start to launch, it probably took me about 50 hours over the course of my vacation week. At first, I determined the algorithm and spent a good chunk of time compiling a giant pool of marketing blogs. Then, I hand-calculated every blogs ranking in Excel. From there, I designed the site and added the content. Since then, several bloggers have suggested sites to me, so the list has grown and continues to grow today. About two weeks ago, RSS expert Marjolein Hoekstra contacted me out of the blue and offered to help turn the Power 150 from a static link library into a living, breathing list and a much more resourceful tool. You can now search and subscribe by keyword, browse the combined River of News feed, or openly explore feed-to-feed. The subscribe to your search feature is very cool in that you can grab the RSS URL for your custom search and instantly see when your keyword is mentioned by blogs in the Power 150.

Bite: Tell us a little bit about how the rankings are done. What's the calculation? Why use only Bloglines subscriptions as opposed to other RSS readers?

And: I recommend reading my Comments
Bite Communications, a worldwide public relations firm with offices in London, New York, San Francisco and Stockholm. An avid observer of the social media revolution, he can often be found posting about his favorite topics--PR, marketing and news consumption habits--on the