Boing Boing vanquished in a week?

I was looking at the Technorati Top 100 this morning and my jaw dropped on noticing that not only was Boing Boing no longer the most popular blog, having been overtaken by a japanese site, but what is extraordinary is the margin by which this new site has drawn into the lead and how quickly this has been done.

The Technorati Top 100 is measured by the number of sites that have linked to a blog in the last six months. Boing Boing has over 18,000 links in the period. Robert Scoble, has two blogs in the Top 100, which is splitting his ranking, but these blogs have 2600 and 2200 links in the same period. Dave Winer's Scripting News in 99th place looks like it might fall out of the Top 100 soon, with 2100 links.

The new leader of the Top 100 has over 50000 links and appears to have achieved this in less than a week from what I can see going back through the links.

Technorati Tags: Technorati, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Boing Boing

UPDATE 14th Jan - I noticed today that Boing Boing was back in it's number one spot. I wrote to Dave Sifry to ask if the the Top 100 was being gamed or had the Japenese site been removed for another reason. Dave was kind enough to write back and let me know that Hatena, the Japanese site involved, is a hosting site and that each blog links back to the homepage of the tool. Dave tells me that these tools are removed from the Technorati Top 100 as they notice them. Thanks for clearing that up for me Dave!