In Part 2 of his State of the Blogosphere report, Dave Sifry covers the growth of blogs as media and discusses emerging trends for handling information overload. He writes that blogs are gaining the attention of bloggers and readers, with some blogs getting more attention (in the form of links to them) than sites such as Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC. Bloggers are also changing the economics of the trade magazine space, he writes, with blogs that cover topics such as WiFi, gadgets, the internet, photography, music, and other niche areas thriving.

The "Magic Middle" of the attention curve consists of some 155,000 blogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. "It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere," Sifry points out.

That fact has led to what Technorati calls Explore: "Why not use these authoritative bloggers as a new kind of editorial board? Watch what they do, what they post about, and what they link to…. The idea is to use the bloggers that know the most about an area or topic to help spot the interesting trends that may never hit the 'A-list'."

Technorati has just launched the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of any Explore category to read the most interesting posts via newsreaders.

Related story:

Technorati: Blogosphere Ballooning; 1.2 Million Posts a Day