Expanding on my previous post inspired by Phil Wolff on mapping the Blogsphere, we can discuss what we think might do the job effectively, then state a series of wishes for additional standards that apply to more than one vendor for this to work, assuming they are sufficiently motivated for it to happen. Here is link to other people comments on Phil Wolff idea.
There are a lot of sites that don't show up on the radar screens of search engines or weblog directories. Newbies who might delay self-registration until they get more self-confidence. Weblogs inside the intranet firewall of a business, school system, or government agency. People on project teams can have private multi-author sites known only to each other and need password to access the content. Some Blog Software is free unregistered until get paid services, or lacks the high environment options of the leaders. Pirates want a low profile. Do we want to count all of this in our blogsphere map?
Some Blog Software outfits claim 750,000 customers or some such number, and we know many not registered with weblog.com. Many can be inactive for a broad spectrum of reasons ranging from newbie got suck or hyper active ran out of disk space and continued on next installment space. Would some Blog Software places accept an outside audit of where they get their customer count, and who would pay for such an audit?
From this we can hopefully get ratios of total customer volume vs. weblog.com radar that are reliable proportions across consistent Blog Software Types (on line, off line, publish, community, etc.). I call this the radar ratio ... how much is out there as opposed to how much is actually on the radar screens. I think that journalists and researchers would be highly motivated to get a handle on what that is, and might be where the funding come from for my proposed audit.
Some Blog Software is more appropriate for educators, journalists, intranets, and other non-hostile labels of WHAT AM I motivation for weblog. On/off global radar screen probably vaies by types of such communities.
There must be at least 50 different directories of weblogs, and counting. There needs to be a registration service where it is easier for the beginner to fill in all the info about self, that the various services desire, and say to send this to ALL the directories, or NONE of them, or SPECIFIC ones. I am thinking of a page connected to the Prefs, in which there would be links to each of the directories basic info, so the blogger could say YES register me with THIS one also. An important part of this is WHAT AM I in terms of categorizing type of personal interests intended for this blog, which will change over time. We might need a variant per category. There should be some info pre-calculated here that you cannot change ... WHAT AM I in terms of what Blog Software.
I have seen posts saying this or that content focus is not a real weblogger, and the phraseology is invariably somewhat hostile. We need to come up with non-hostile labels and definitions linked to the self-registration page such that a person who really is that type of user vision for blog usage can say YES that is what I want to be or accomplish, and check off a particular self-assessment, or NO none of these match my self-image goals, so they optionally key in text describing personal blog goals.
Different directories for different purposes do want different info, and quite probably someone filling out their page will not have enough info to get properly registered at one or more Link Service directories. We'd want the rest of the input to get to the registration updates, leaving like an error list that you can individually click on and deal with - either cancel attempt to register with a site, or add the additional info they want. Later some services might want more info, leading to a new error message you want to deal with at your convenience.
Now the recently updated chart in weblog.com in addition to current info would have some WHAT AM I column(s), one being abbreviated which Blog Software like RU MT with unmistakable what we talking about, and another being user vision for blog, short form of the non-hostile labels, and perhaps link to the person's registration info page link, if that individual had checked off YES to making it available here.
This serves many interests. End users faster and more easily locate similar to self, and are inspired to update their own WHAT AM I page. Link Service directories combine how recently updated on weblogs.com with WHAT AM I classification, for all sorts of interesting correlations.
11:14:57 AM 
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