@iain mmm there are a couple of approaches, some combination of them would be good:

• sbot.blobs.ls : http://scuttlebot.io/apis/scuttlebot/blobs.html#ls-source apparently lists the blobs in your store
• flume : would allow me to index all messages to make a lookup like:

{
  ''&sfoIYo0kKKGI+TJYnznVDSs3BM/HjMWdCPXirvj9BfE=.sha256': [
    {
      msg: "%SkBwBFxgrNjNlu99WkYP16clQqz+GDJfPLAZBtCZ+cc=.sha256"
      author: "@MIX23420934lsdjflksjdf",
      timestamp: 243234243324
    }, {
      msg: "%bJRqChs48WKYni+2caoSvobUTmqnIO03K2KX1hF87do=.sha256"
      author: "@IANsdfakjsd09343xj239",
      timestamp: 324093409834
   }
  ] 
}

e.g. this one blob was used in a couple of places by a couple of people at different times. Having this data would let you do interesting sorting and queries. Query by friends, by strangers, maybe add data structure to put a score next to it indicating how much you've engaged with that blob - was it in threads you were active in. This could hep you discover interesting things you missed.