Chinese blogs and the Technorati 100: Where's Xu Jing Lei?

Technorati recently came out with their new list of the Top 100 blogs (of course, I can't see it because Technorati is blocked again, but that's another story for other bloggers) Fons referred to Ethan Zuckerman's post which asserts that Technorati's David Sifry's suggested decrease of Chinese language representation within the most recent survey is in fact due to Technorati not doing a good job of covering key Chinese blog service providers (BSP) like Bokee or Blogbus.

Ethan writes:

...it looks like Technorati has begun indexing a few more Chinese blogging sites… but it still seems to be missing most blogs on Bokee.com, for instance. I asked Isaac Mao, when I got the chance to hang out with him in Manila, whether Chinese bloghosts would start supporting pingservers any time soon. He pointed out that many Chinese geeks don’t see the advantage of having their blogs indexed by an English-language, American-hosted service…

If Technorati continues to blocked, there will be even less incentive for Chinese bloghosts to support pingservers.

BTW, for an excellent discussion on impact of Chinese MSN spaces on overall blog stats and to understand why it is the 8th most visited site in China according to Alexa, see Ethan's post here.

I wonder if they cover Sina blogs. I would think that the blog of Chinese movie celebrity Xu Jing Lei would show up on the list if they were. Just browsing through some of her articles, you can see she can get well over 100,000 page views per article and at least 1,000 comments per article, sometimes 3-4,000. I would be curious how many blogs can generate thousands comments per article on a regular basis. Granted, Xu Jing Lei is not your typical "citizen" blogger, but her not being on the list suggests that Technorati is missing Sina. And if they are missing Sina, Bokee, and Blogbus...then they are missing a big chunk of the Chinese blogosphere.

Another question: why does Technorati group both simplified and traditional character Chinese into the same group when you filter for language? This is another thing which makes me think they are not really focusing on Chinese language blogs.

As I have said previuosly, I still think blogs are not as meaningful as BBS to understand any sort of Chinese cultural zeitgeist. However, I think blogs shouldn't be underestimated, and Technorati is doing just that.