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May 6, 2003
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If you're intrigued
or distressed about the
Salon popularity lists below
, you can find both insight and solace in yesterday's
Electric Venom
article on
Blogging Metaphysics
. Venomous Kate adds fuel to the fire about why some blogs succeed and others
fail, and why some bloggers give up too soon and others not soon enough.
It's invigorating analysis. A teaser: She identifies the following types
of blogger (you can be more than one type):
Isobloggers - who blog mainly for personal reasons
Thinker Extrabloggers - essayists who wander far
from their home community
Linker Extrabloggers - connectors who wander far
from their home community, and bring back gems
Thinker Intrabloggers - essayists who usually stay
within their home community , and start diablogues
Love-Linker Intrabloggers - connectors who usually
stay within their home community, and build online relationships
Blogroll-Linker Intrabloggers - connectors who usually
stay within their home community, and cite 'A-list' bloggers a lot
Her advice for Intrabloggers who want to be more popular: Don't be afraid
to use your search engine to get outside more. And then:
Contribute something original;
Say something original; and damn it,
make your site accessible with good layout, easy to read fonts, a reliable
host, working links and working permalinks in the event someone, like me,
wants to send some traffic your way. If that's too hard for you to do -
or if you're just not good at it - then put your blog away before somebody
gets hurt.
Thanks to A Blog Doesn't Need...
(Linker-Extrablogger par excellence) for the link.
DO SALON BLOGGERS NEED TO 'GET OUT MORE' TO BEAT SHIRKY'S LAW?
One of the things I observed while
compiling the tables below was an apparent inverse correlation between
the number of inbound links to each blog and its number of reciprocal links.
In other words, people whose blogrolls are very similar to the list of blogs
that blogroll them, tend to have few people linking to them (smaller
circles at right). Yet people whose blogrolls consist largely of uncommon
links, outside their community, tend to have few of those blogrolled
blogs linking back to them, but a lot of other blogs linking back to them.
And this seems to be true even for those that have small blogrolls or
none at all.
The obvious lesson is that the number of inbound links depends on what you've
done to craft and then promote your blog, especially outside the Salon community,
rather than on the dubious civility of reciprocal blogrolling. And by going
outside the community more often, to other blogs and non-traditional news
sources, you also discover more new things to report on your blog, increasing
its value to other Salon readers and making it more likely they'll blogroll
you even if you don't return the favour.
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6:26:11 PM 
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These rankings are based on number
of inbound blogs per
Technorati
. 'Inbound blogs' are those that have either blogrolled you or mentioned
you with a link in a recent (not yet archived) post. The number of inbound
blogs is shown after the blog name. This list tells a quite different story
of blog popularity from the Monthly Top 50 list (below), as it filters out
the effect of one-time search engine hits, spikes and self-initiated hits.
As with the Monthly Top 50 list, (a) the name and location of each blog's
'owner', when known, is shown below the blog name, (b) the Salon blog number
links to the blog's home page, and (c) I'll fix any errors or omissions you
tell me about promptly.
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10:45:02 AM
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Rankings are based on number of hits
between April 5 and May 5 (ranking in previous month in brackets).
Shirky's Power Law
continues to hold, as the top 75 blogs received an aggregate 750,000 hits
each month, but the cutoff for the 'top 25' and 'top 50' lists dropped from
3,500 and 1,700 hits last month to 3,000 and 1,500 hits this month, a second
straight decline. Name and location of each blog's 'owner', when known,
is shown below the blog name. The Salon blog # links to the blog's home page.
Apologies in advance for any errors or omissions. Corrections gratefully
accepted.
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7:44:15 AM
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© Copyright 2004
Dave Pollard.
Last update:
19/02/2004; 2:44:25 PM. |
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SEARCH SITE
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WHAT
THE BLOGOSPHERE WANTS MORE OF
Blog readers
want to
see
more:
|
- original
research,
surveys etc.
- original,
well-crafted
fiction
- great
finds: resources,
blogs,
essays, artistic works
- news
not found anywhere
else
- category
killers:
aggregators that
capture the best
of
many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
- clever,
concise
political opinion
(most readers
prefer these consistent with their own views)
- benchmarks,
quantitative analysis
- personal
stories,
experiences,
lessons learned
- first-hand
accounts
- live
reports from events
- insight:
leading-edge thinking
&
novel
perspectives
- short
educational pieces
- relevant
"aha" graphics
- great
photos
- useful
tools and
checklists
- précis,
summaries, reviews and
other
time-savers
- fun
stuff: quizzes,
self-evaluations,
other
interactive content
|
Blog writers
want to
see
more:
|
- constructive
criticism,
reaction,
feedback
- 'thank
you' comments,
and why readers liked their
post
- requests
for future
posts on specific
subjects
- foundation
articles:
posts that
writers can build on,
on their own blogs
- reading
lists/aggregations of
material on specific,
leading-edge subjects that writers can use as resource material
- wonderful
examples of
writing of a
particular genre,
that they can learn from
- comments
that engender
lively
discussion
- guidance on
how to write in
the
strange world of
weblogs
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This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
