Hey, do you read Wired? I don’t (Catherine has a subscription), but I am taking notice of Wired now – the cover of their August issue is certainly a departure from covers’ past and I must admit I recognize the pretty face, though many of you may not. Under the headline “Internet Famous: Julia Allison and the Secrets of Self-Promotion”, the August cover features Julia Allison, an NYC-based blogger who, among other things, covers sex and relationships for Time Out New York. She was recently dubbed “the modern day Carrie Bradshaw” by The New York Times because she writes about her personal life on her blog. Allison just launched a new blog/web portal called NonSociety.com with her best friends Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin. Now it should go without saying that thanks to platforms like Word Press, Blogger, Tumblr, and Type Pad, everyone from your crazy next door neighbor to my Grandma can blog, but usually one doesn’t end up on the cover of a major magazine like Wired as a result. So what’s Allison doing there and why should you care?

Julia Allison is to fame via Internet over-sharing as Paris Hilton was to fame via dancing on tabletops without your panties on. 

A few years ago, everyone was moaning and groaning, but still not tearing their eyes away, from the spectacle of Paris Hilton becoming famous for simply…well, existing. Hilton was one of the first I suppose to make a living branding herself as a commodity – not because she did anything particularly talented or special (though I will admit that The Simple Life cracked me up), but simply because she demanded the attention and we listened. Celebrity has become attached to scandal and Hilton, in her own brilliant way, made a name for herself by latching on to that.

Allison is to fame via Internet over-sharing as Hilton was to fame via dancing on tabletops without your panties on. She’s become internet famous by being “herself” and as she’s let her audience witness the minor scandals in her own life, that audience has multiplied. Myself among them, but remember, I think Big Brother is the best show on TV.

Developing herself as a brand by posting endless details about her life, posting portrait after portrait, worshipful video after worshipful video, Julia has somehow commanded the blogosphere—and beyond—to pay attention. Wired has clearly chimed in too. But we can’t help but wish that a more worthy female who blogs about sex and relationships (in ways that aren’t entirely about herself) had received the honor of a national magazine cover. Here are the five we think actually deserve that recognition—you should start reading them immediately.

1. Lux Alptraum from Boinkology We link to Lux’s blog on a pretty regular basis, partly because they have a knack for finding stories we manage to miss, but mostly because of Lux’s unique take on a lot of mainstream stories, like an “insider” assessment of Showtime’s Secret Diary Of A Call Girl.

2. Heather B. Armstrong from Dooce.com Why you should read Heather’s blog is summed up best by the blogger herself on her “About” page: “This website chronicles my life from a time when I was single and making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles, to when I was dating the man who would become my husband, to when I lost my job and lived life as an unemployed drunk, to when I married my husband and moved to Utah, to when I became pregnant, to when I threw up and became unbearably swollen during the pregnancy, to the birth, to the aftermath, to the postpartum depression that landed me in a mental hospital. I’m better now.” Now doesn’t that sound interesting?

3. Jessa Crispin from Bookslut.com A sexy, funny, thoughtful blog about READING!? Amazing.

4. Anna Goldfarb from ShmittenKitten.com In addition to writing about love, dating, and sex in her home city of Philadelphia, Goldfarb analyzes different “types” of guys through funny doodles and stories. Best of all, she accepts tips and suggestions for topics so the site has a level of user-interactivity.

5. Rachel Kramer Bussel at LustyLady.Blogspot.com In the interest of full-disclosure, Rachel writes for The Frisky, but we’ve admired her skills with the sexy word makin’ long before we launched. In fact, we, at the very least, have tried to mirror her honesty and fearlessness on this blog. So we’re psyched she’s writing for us—but don’t miss out on everything she pens elsewhere.