For information on the Guinness World Records, please visit Guinness World Records
When I was growing up, the Guinness World Book of Records was one of our most popular toys. We would read through the book and be dazzled by the most mountains climbed, the highest elevation flown, and the greatest weight lifted. We would be shocked by the longest gum chewer, pogo stick bouncer, and ear, nose, and throat stretcher. Contests were held all over the world to attract the attention of Guinness World Record keepers, just to get in the book. It brought out the ugliest, tallest, fattest, biggest feet, longest arms, longest hair, longest fingernails, and oldest into the public eye to be recognized for their….achievements.
The competition to be the biggest, largest, fattest, hottests, mostests and bettests at common or uncommon tasks got me thinking about the war of the blogs and search engine placement. While Guinness holds the record for human achievements, who are the record keepers of blog achievements?
Let me add that I have found none of these to be the clear and definitive “best of” list. These are based upon a variety of “best” qualifications that range from most traffic, highest link popularity, part of a networked system (signed up for their services), nominated and voted, and other more random criteria. Consider these examples of the competition set up around blogs rather than true “world record winners”.
- Bloglines Top Blog Feeds (members only – based on feed access)
- Bloglines Top Blogs by Link Popularity (members only – based on links to member sites)
- Blog Street Top 100 Blogs (members only – based on listing in blogrolls)
- DayPop Top Blogs (Citations and Referrals)
- Technorati Popular Top Blogs (member only – based on link popularity)
- Top Filipino Blogs (member only)
- BlogPulse Top Weblog Group (Link Popularity)
- BlogShares Top 100 Blogs (a play on the stockmarket of blogs)
- The Truth Laid Bear – Top Blogs by Traffic Rating (member only – based on traffic)
- Top British Blogs (members only – traffic)
- Truth Laid Bear – Most Popular Blog in the Ecosystem (member only – traffic based – unique level shown by food chain equivalencies)
- Forbes Best Blogs Listings – Annual Report by Category (wide range of criteria)
- BlogDex – Top Blogs (member only – link popularity)
- Best Blogs in Asia (member only)
- Washington Post – 2004 Best Blogs – Politics and Elections Readers Choice Awards (vote)
- Reporters Without Borders – Best blogs defending freedom of expression (voted)
- Bloogz Rank Top Blogs (vistors and link popularity)
- Eatonweb Top 50 Blogs (ranking)
- BBC News Technology – Best Blogs of the Web (voted)
Guinness doesn’t yet have a category for blog, blogging, or blogger. This opens the whole area of blog record breakers. If you know of any contests that resulted in record breaking in any of the following, please let me know so we can spread the word that there are more records to break with blogs.
- Longest non-stop blogging
- Longest blog entry
- Longest blog entry about only one subject
- Shortest blog entry about only one subject
- Longest single sentence representing an entire blog entry
- Best writing in a blog
- Best photography in a photoblog
- Most educational blog
- Funniest blog
- Funniest blog entry
- Most people blogging at the same time on a single blog site
- Most blogs owned and maintained by only one person
- Most money made on a single blog in on day, one month, or one year
- Most unusual method of blogging
- Fattest blogger
- Skinniest blogger
- Blogger blogging against the most overwhelming challenges
- Blogger blogging consistently from the highest elevation
- Blogger blogging consistently from the hottest place on the planet
- Blogger blogging consistently from the coldest place on the planet
- What other extreme record breaking blogging should be listed?
NOTE: Due to the overwhelming number of comments on this post asking for my help to get people’s attempts at world records into the Guinness World Records, something I know nothing about and has nothing to do with this post, I’m turning off comments. For information on the Guinness World Records, please visit Guinness World Records. and please, in the future, learn to read before commenting. Or at least read How Not to Comment on Comments. 😉
Lorelle on WordPress 
15 Comments
i would like to participate in memory contest, so i need the formalities to enter & what are the rules to be followed & i would like know the previous break in this contest.
Where is the nomination form or did you enter yourself already Lorelle?
Information on entering the linked contests is found on their pages. As for the rest, I’m still waiting for people to come up with such awards. 😉 But if these existed, I’d definitely be among those blogging under the most challenging conditions lately, living in Hurricane Alley, USA. hee hee
Hi!My name is mahadevan.I am from India.I would like to create a world record for the maximum number of birthdays remembered and also for the maximum number of random objects remembered.Please let me know as to how to go about this…P.Mahadevan
DOES THIS FALL IN THE CATEGORY OF A WORLD RECORD?
I have a blog ‘Rediscovering India’ that I started on 19th August 2004 and that has continued for the past 21 ½ months. It covers a wide range of subject pertaining to India and Indians. These are travel, movies, literature, politics, food, festivals, sports, women, and philosophy. There are also weekly news clippings compiled from different Indian newspapers.
Some of these posts were showcased on the Blog section of the Times of India homepage.
The link to my blog is – http://o3.indiatimes.com/rediscoveringindia
Under the circumstances, I would like to lay claim to the following –
• the longest running blog by an individual with approx 1 post per day
(606 posts in 651 days from 19/8/2004 to 31/5/2006)
• cumulative viewership of the blog is in excess of 168000 as on 31/5/2006
• cumulative word count of the blog is over 275000 as on 31/5/2006
• the blog has been on the internet for the last twenty one and half months
While I think it is something to be very proud of, it comes no where close to a World Record as I can think of at least 20 other blogs with those and bigger claims who have been “blogging” even before the term was known as blogging. You’re talking to one of those.
Be very proud of what you have done and keep on doing it. You must be doing something right, and even more importantly, you must love it to keep on doing it. That speaks very highly for YOU. Not many can keep up with a project with concentrated effort for more than 3 months let alone 6 or 20. Good for you.
lorelle, thanks for the feedback. i thought that with as many as four different parameters, i stood some chance.
anyway, are there any indians in the list of your 20?
My 20 is my personal knowledge not a World Record’s worth of evidence, and I don’t know. I travel a lot and have spent many years living overseas in Europe and the Middle East as well as back in “home” the US. I read blogs from all over and I rarely pay attention to where they are from, unless they are totally focused on their geographic location as part of their blogging. Many top bloggers don’t reveal where they are located. So I just don’t know.
I’m sure that you come close to a World Record on many accounts. Contact Guinness World Record folks and see what they have to say. Oh, and check out the various Blog-a-thons as I’m sure there is a competition for you there. I know of one blogger (again from where I don’t know) who did a blog-a-thon for a couple of days posting every 10 minutes or less. That’s a record in my book. 😉
I’m waiting for someone to come out with a specific viable list of actual records, with winners, in blogging. So you might be among the first.
lorelle – thanks for the clarifications.
i did contact the guiness authorities but they do not have any section devoted to blogs – as yet!
I was wondering What the record was for “Longest Gum Chewing”.
Dear friends,
You will be pleased to know that my claim for the ‘longest running individual blog by an Indian’ has been accepted by the authorities of the Limca Book of Records for my blog ‘Rediscovering India’ which has been appearing on the indiatimes.com since August-2004. There are 704 posts as on 24/7/2006 which works out to an average of one post every day for the past 23 months.
I have received intimation from the Editor that the record will appear in the 2007 issue of the Records Book under the category of ‘Communication’. The Book is scheduled for release in January-February 2007.
I am grateful to all of you for the direct and indirect encouragement that you have given me to continue posting on different aspects of our Indian life under all possible categories with the objective of rediscovering our own country from various angles.
Regards
Prabir Ghose
I read the Guinness World Records book and reab about a game record for the game Donkey Kong Classics and it was a high score. I hold a game record that I think is not common. And it’s a puzzle game. Is there anywhere I can email it where it with a chance might be put in the book next year since there’s a new one every year?
Again, I know nothing about World Records. Zip. Zero. This article is about coming up with imaginative records for bloggers to break. It has NOTHING to do with Guinness. If you want answers regarding World Records, go see Guinness World Records.
If you want to play the brainstorming game and come up with some novelty ideas for which bloggers could strive for to break some kind of blogging record, then post them here. Nothing will probably come of it, but it’s still a fun idea. Otherwise, go visit Guinness World Records and ask them.
I recently set 4 world records for blogging:
World Record – Blog Post At The Highest Altitude: 31,000 feet above sea level
World Record – Going The Fastest While Writing & Posting To A blog: 515 mph
World Record – Highest Altitude Upload to Flickr: 31,000 feet above sea level
World Record – Going The Fastest While Uploading to Flickr: 515 miles per hourAll These were set by me, The Hobby Guy on Nov 10, 2006.
This of course is all in fun, but you are right, no one is taking count. So, I have clamied these records. You can read the record entry post here:
http://blog.thehobbyguy.tv/2006/11/10/world-record-blogging/
i love the world book ov records i have got every one!
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