Short history

Likekhor was established in January, 2010. According to “w3spy.net” Likekhor’s server is based in Nashville, USA. The website receives 1,095 unique visitors per day. 47.09% of search queries driving traffic to Likekhor.com are the term “لایک خور” and 12.05% of search queries resulting in clicks to Likekhor.com are searching using “Likekhor.” This indicates that people find the website after hearing about it from somebody else.

Alexa.com has ranked Likekhor #10,864 of visited websites in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which could indicate that a majority of Likekhor users are based outside the country. It also indicates that Likekhor.com is a website that does not need to be returned to often, as it works in conjunction with Google Reader, which is far more popular.

Likekhor is a website that provides categorised and ranked lists of Persian-language weblogs and blog posts according to the number of subscribers they have, the number of times they are ‘liked,’ and the number of times they are ‘shared’ in Google Reader. Likekhor gathers its data by ‘following’ the shared and liked items of 31,738 Persian-language Google Reader users, which it detected using its own robots, and by following the 2,570 blogs that are registered with it.

Likekhor claims that it is the only website of its kind and that its idea is totally unique.

'How' it works

There are a set of criteria that a blog must fulfil to be registered on Likekhor’s website and therefore subjected to the ranking system. Firstly, it must have at least 40 Google Reader subscribers to any of its Atom and RSS feeds and secondly, it must have received at least 100 total likes in Google Reader. Likekhor started with a collection of approximately 1,000 feeds but now blog owners must register their own blogs with Likekhor when they are eligible.

Likekhor sends 6 robots to the 2,570 registered blogs through API Google Reader and these robots count the number of likes, shares and subscriptions that the registered blogs have received in order to provide a time-sensitive ranked list of blogs and blog posts within Google Reader. It ranks the blogs in Google Reader based on the aggregating formula combining the number of likes with the number of subscribers and comparing this with the overall number of published posts.

The six robots search for different things, but have one thing in common. They all have their own RSS feeds that can be subscribed to within Google Reader. This also diminishes the number of repeat visitors to Likekhor’s own website, because for Google Reader users, there is no need to return.

The RSS feeds of the robots (all of them except for Fakhri) update within Google Reader every two hours and they report back to Likekhor every six hours.

Robot #1, Gholam Ali (The first Likekhor robot and the one with the most subscribers), Subscribers: 2,074, What it searches for/shares: Minimal (short text blogs) and blogs without a specific agenda with a minimum of 60 likes and without pictures.

Robot #2, Gholam-Hossein, Subscribers: 833, What it searches for/shares: This robot just shares photos and images that have had more than 20 likes.

Robot #3, Gholam-Reza, Subscribers: 776, What it searches for/shares: Blogs with large amounts of text that have more than 30 likes.

Robot #4, Fakhri, Subscribers: 725, What it searches for/shares: It searches Google Reader at 8:30AM Tehran time every day for items that have been ‘shared’ in Google Reader at least 40 times. Fakhri follows 31,738 Persian-language Google Reader users in order to find the most shared items.

Robot #5, Aramdokht, Subscribers: 580, What it searches for/shares: A new robot that searches for blogs with less than 300 subscribers but more than 20 likes.

Robot #6, Rouyintan, Subscribers: 452, What it searches for/shares: Items with more than 100 likes. This robot is good for those who don’t have the time to read a lot of items and just want the most popular daily items.

Why it 'works' for Iranians

Why it 'works' for Iranians

In 2009 Google added the ‘like’ button to their Google Reader tool, a tool that was already gaining popularity with Iranian bloggers. Likekhor’s existence is dependent on this function within Google Reader. Likekhor thus illustrates a general schema of Iranian’s taste, as it documents their likes and subscriptions. Iranians have repurposed Google Reader as a social network, sharing and commenting on blogs, posts and items within this tool. This is important because other social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace have been blocked by the Iranian government. Moreover Google Reader can be used as a circumvention technique as it allows users to access the feeds of blocked websites.

Characterization of (national) web it outputs

Likekhor outputs categorised and ranked lists of blogs and blog posts that have been liked or shared a certain number of times in Google Reader.

Language it outputs

Persian

Site locations

Based in the USA, visitors from inside and outside Iran who speak Persian.

Audience

Targeted at Persian-speakers who either write or read blogs who are interested in analysing blogging trends or finding out what is ‘hot’ or ‘most liked’ in the blogosphere at any particular time. It appeals to bloggers who can see how they are ranked, and readers who are able to find new blog to subscribe to.