You knew this hand to be coming, but with 9Rules hell-bent on becoming the biggest blog network, sorry network of blogs, sorry again … link farm, you knew that sooner rather than later the call would be made of the old quality over quantity argument.

And it has over at a 9Rules “Note”.

See folks, what’s the point of gloating and thumping your chests over how many applications a new round has brought in and then say geee, gosh golly aren’t we popular - we’re including 100+ new blogs. The race is on for the 1000 blog network, followed by 2000.

From the Note at 9rules …

I must say that 9rules content seems to be headed in the entirely wrong direction these days.

Ouch! And she continues…

Alas, the network seems to be “reaching” for content these days and there has been an influx of new sites from authors with no obvious talent or skills, writing about things they know little about.

And further she goes…

The problem, I suppose, is that 9rules was my filter and I generally expected the quality of the linked content to quite high. This was certainly true in the past but it seems to be less true now.

She later comments in the thread … “…9rules will loose its relevance.” Zing! And there you have it. A classic case of quantity ripping quality to shreds - happens every time.

And along comes Scrivs and as any good CEO would do comes out with the numbers…

Out of 1190 sites that submitted, we accepted a paltry 134. Therefore we accepted 8.88%

9Rules has 329 sites in it’s network. But remember, it’s not a blog network. Then what is it? The only thing I can come up with is to share links together, build up pagerank etc., … hang on … a link farm!

A commenter …

To be honest, I haven’t started reading any of the new blogs on the network since round 4. Some I was reading were added but most of the stuff that is getting in the network is not worth reading

And another commenter …

I also feel that the content of 9rules is really, really on a downhill slope … I feel that 9rules really needs to pull its socks up because I don’t really enjoy much of the content on here any more.

And then another commenter …

I came across 9Rules a while ago and could see right away that it’s a dying thing.

And then we have the usual “elitists” standing firm in their love of everything 9Rules does.

What also strikes me as a concern is the many who comment anonymously (and openly say so) - could it be that the three amigos (Scrivs, Mikee and Tyme) hold a grudge? You’d hope not - but then nothing would surprise me. But these are busy execs, no! : Scrivs is too busy playing WoW and just being plain cool, Tyme is playing the sane one (I think) and Mike is getting hot and sweaty over the new iPhone.

Head on over to 9Rules and read this “Note” and especially the 40+ comments…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But seriously folks, it’s really horses for courses - one mans rubbish is another’s gold and on and on I could go on with those sort of cliches.

That is the beauty of blogging and blogs - there are so many out there in different flavors and tastes that everyone will eventually find their swag of favored blogs … and then build their own mini-community, accept in only what appeals to them and very slowly expand … hang on, not another 9rules! :-)