I am reading blogs with bloglines.com aggregator these days. I have four categories of blogs there : FIMB, PIMB, RB and LJ.
FIMB stands for Famous Incontinent and Mostly Boring. These are “A-list” blogs like Scobelizer, which are updated with the frequency of bunny poop and are so full of mentions of wiki, podcasting and other buzzwords that it’s not even funny. Still, amongst bunny pooplets there are often interesting links. FIMBS rarely generate original content, but mostly comment on what’s going on. Being gadflies they do that pretty well.
PIMB stands for Pompous Incontinent Multiauthor Blogs like Gothamist. These are usually for-profit blogs with several authors that post even more frequently than FIMBs. There’s mindless link and meme propagation galore, but with a twist. First of all they often have a unifying topic, like NYC or gadgets or politics. Then there’s the attempt to emulate print journalism with things like editorials. The most bizarre trait of some PIMBS is when different authors start to express opinions on behalf of the blog : “Gothamist will go back to finding baseball kinda boring” or “All Gothamist can say is we can’t wait to see Douche or Turd”. My guess is that PIMBs happen when a couple of IMBs or FIMBS get together. I separated PIMBS because they are not as boring as FIMBS, but left unchecked they fill my reading with buzz and white noise.
RB is a set of regular blogs, authors of which make well crafted and original posts. There are some FIMBsh blogs lumped in there, but those usually don’t have the most annoying traits of FIMBs. LJ is a set of all of my livejournal reading.
