History of the Top vBlog Part II

This years top blog voting is already in progress and while we wait to see the results I thought I’d refresh a post I did that provides a retrospect on how the top blog voting started and also comparing the voting results over the years.

2008 – The beginning

Many years ago I used to do a lot of top 10 lists on specific topics such as “The Top 10 things you must read about Storage for vSphere” that would list the best documents and blog posts to read on the internet that are related to that topic. One day I decided to do one on some of the best VMware related blogs on the internet, back then blogging was nowhere near as popular as it is today and the number of blogs devoted to VMware & virtualization was in the dozens instead of in the hundreds as it is today. I put together my first top 10 list on VMware blogs back in 2008, here’s what the original one looked like on my old vmware-land.com website:

2009 – The first public voting

In 2009 I decided to open it up to have others decide who the top VMware bloggers were by having a public voting form where they could choose their favorite bloggers. Again back then their were nowhere near the blogs that there are today so I only published the top 10 results. We had a total of around 350 people voting for the first year.

2010 – Blogging starts to get popular

In 2010 the voting became a lot bigger as blogging was starting to become more popular. On the ballot that year were 66 blogs so I expanded the top 10 to the top 25 so more blogs could be recognized. The number of people voting for the blogs doubled with over 700 votes cast. Instead of just publishing the results of the voting I put together a presentation to announce the winners.

2011 – The top 25 blogger countdown with Casey Kasem

In 2011 more and more blogs showed up to raise the total on the ballot to 115. This time we had almost 900 votes cast and to do something different and a bit more fun than just posting the results we announced them on a video podcast (vChat episode) with Simon and David and also John Troyer as a special guest. I also wanted to be able to give something back to the blogger community so as an added bonus I was able to get Stephen Herrod to record a special video to recognize the blogger community and their contributions to VMware.

2012 – Putting bloggers into categories

In 2012 the blogs continued to pile up with jumping to 187 and the number of people voting climbed as well with almost 1200 votes. As the top 25 doesn’t change all that much from year to year I wanted to do more to help recognize some of the bloggers that might get lost in the numbers. For the first time I started having specific voting categories for areas like storage bloggers, independent bloggers, podcasts and more. This helped refine the results beyond the simple voting positions to highlight bloggers in different areas. Also due to the sheer number of bloggers I also started publishing the top 50 blogs on the vLaunchpad instead of the top 25. Once again we recorded a vChat episode with John Troyer to announce the results.

2013 – Holy crap there are a lot of blogs

In 2013 the number of blogs increased to 243, that’s an amazing number, where else have you ever seen that amount of blogs dedicated to a specific technology or product. It really validates both the passion for the technology and the community that VMware has built around themselves thanks to people like John Troyer. This year the number of people voting continued to climb to around 1300. Once again I included categories in the voting results and we also announced the results on a vChat episode.

2014 – You’re going to need a bigger boat

For the 2014 voting we once again had a lot more blogs, I added a lot of new blogs to the vLaunchpad which push the number of blogs to vote for up to 320. With the big increase in blogs I finally had to increase my top blogger list on the vLaunchpad from the top 50 to the top 100 so more great blogs could be recognized. Once again I included categories in the voting results and this time did something different as we announced the results via a live Google Hangout with John Troyer, David Davis and Rick Vanover.

2015 – It’s not just a blog, it’s an adventure

So for 2015 the number of blogs reaches epidemic status as we have an even greater jump in the number of blogs at over 400 blogs dedicated to VMware & virtualization. To add some perspective to this number take into account that this number includes mostly active blogs. I regularly maintain the vLaunchpad and remove dead blogs from it, last year instead of just removing them I started a new Archive section as some of the blogs still have good information on then. With this many blogs it truly becomes difficult to choose only your top 10 favorites during the annual voting process. Because of this next year I will increase that so you can choose an even dozen blogs to get more blogs the recognition they deserve.

Top 25 Results through the Years

• 2014 Top Blogger results – 320 blogs, 1400 votes
• 2013 Top Blogger results – 243 blogs, 1300 votes
• 2012 Top Blogger results – 187 blogs, 1200 votes
• 2011 Top Blogger results – 115 blogs, 860 votes
• 2010 Top Blogger results (full results) – 66 blogs, 700 votes
• 2009 Top Blogger results – 350 votes
• 2008 Top 10 Blogs that VMware administrators must read