I agree with most of what you’re saying here. There’s so many blogs out there, and it would be easy to just write a lot of posts linking to everyone else and slowing moving towards the Top 100. However, I don’t think that’s the best approach to blogging. There are two good ones:

1) The view from CopyBlogger you list in your article, where one writes as a topical authority on their blog. This will slowly develop true authority, and eventually build A-List status over time.

2) The personal blog, where one just writes for themselves. Not everyone has the goal of becoming the most popular blog, but just want to express their thoughts somewhere and share them with a small audience of friends and family.

I guess it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it.