Only the Top Blogs Matter?

“Blogging is the fastest growing form of content on the Web,” said Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search at AskJeeves, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and a major Web search site. “But the number of sites that really matter is narrow.”

“The rest of the sites are like a tree falling in the forest,” he said.

Wait a week and you will be hearing about the long tail of blogging.

As I stated before, I don’t think the number of subscribers is a relevant measure of a blog’s power. Why?

• Some people prefer to actually visit the sites because of the rich content they contain in the comments.
• In niche fields there are going to be a limited number of potential subscribers.

The real measure of a blog is it’s attention & influence. The number of sources and link volume are a far better proxy of that than the number of subscribers, but to be honest, so long as your blog is above the fold – or seen by at least one or two well known bloggers who like you or comment on what you write, if they feel your story has merit it will spread. And stuff changes quickly. I got sued out of nowhere and had about 40,000 new visitors appear on one of my sites.

Syndicated sites that “really matter” — classified as sites that have at least 20 other sites linking to them — number 36,930, according to September data from Bloglines.

I don’t think this is true. Even my narcissistic personal rant / whinge blog has 5 subscribers, and that site is not intended for human consumption

Sites “that matter” — defined as having at least one link from another site — number nearly 1.4 million sites.

It’s so easy to get one rubbish link.

I think placing things in a box to count them has little value, other than marketing the counting product. Why do you think pedometer’s want you to walk 10,000 steps a day instead of jogging for a half hour?

Are bloggers journalists? The debate spins on. But does it matter?

Shield Law Sponsor: Bloggers ‘Probably Not’ Considered Journos :

Bloggers would “probably not” be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill’s co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon.

What is so important or defining about being a real journalist? I understand the concepts that their right to report things, and how they report things, are both fundamental to the illusion of democracy, but the noise and chatter at the bottom often leads to the big stories, which frequently end up getting spun for political manipulation by biased pundits in the mainstream media anyhow.

Squashing public dissent is common to American corporate culture. Stories from bottoms up pieces of the non real journalism get picked up by big media & generally make silencing critics backfire badly. But it all works together as pieces of machinery. To separate it out is to miss the bigger picture of how it all works.

What happens if a blogger also wrote a book? What happens if they are a journalist and a blogger in their spare time? Does it really matter how you make your money?

What makes a person not a journalist just because they chose to use a blog to publish their thoughts? Lets say that blogs are classified as non journalism. What does that really mean? It doesn’t mean they get any less exposure than official media sites.

When I was recently mentioned on both Atrios.blogspot.com and News.com the Atrios blog sent me over 100 times the traffic News.com did.

Some journalists do not like the idea of defining journalists:

A key reason some journalists oppose the popular federal shield proposal is fear that giving Congress the power to define who is and isn’t a journalist could lead effectively to the licensing of journalists.

Licensing journalists wouldn’t make the profession any cleaner, better, or more honest IMHO. Good journalism is still going to look for stories wherever the conversations are. The best journalists are going to have to earn their credibility and trust with their readers and sources.

Ultimately how people are classified probably does not matter as much as what influence they have on the world around them. I will take uncertified person with reach over qualified without exposure any day. So long as the courts are willing to protect citizens rights then I am fine just being a blogger 🙂

Meanwhile, the unedited bloggers continue to gain new distribution channels.

[Warning: adult content link] It appears many adult oriented Blogger blogs are disappearing. The solution? Create many more in a far more automated way, host them remotely, or use a different blog service.

Understandible if they are pure spamblogs, but imagine if you were a blogger who just like writing about sex related topics. You do it for a few years and then out of nowhere your linkage profile, site history, and site vanish. A good example of why it is always best to keep control of your own data.

Anti-blogging, obviously.

You know that is sad. A person who couldn’t cut it being a blogger. Anti blog. Not yummy. 🙁

Well, sometimes I forget this, but an outbound link in every post keeps the link love alive. When you blog, whatever credibility and authority you have is granted by others. The best & cheapest way to build up your credibility and authority is to regularly link out to good stuff.

Regular webmasters, who frequently exchange links in an effort to boost their search authority scores, are told that when in doubt it is best not to link. Blogging is the other way round. It is best to be known as the gal or guy who is all about gratuitous linking.

Some small changes in your outbound linking strategies on a post by post basis may present opportunities for you to make more money, but I tend to think the money does a good job taking care of itself if your blog is interesting.

Linking out is a form of free marketing. Linking to useful resources means:

• you raise your credibility in the eyes of viewers
• you make your site easier to link to, as the people you link at may want to link back, and nobody wants to read a dead end site

Some of the people you link at will never link back, and it is best if it is that way. When people are new to the web (at least the commercial bits of it) some people feel they need paid in one way or another for anything they do for others. When you are new and you reference quality stuff it helps associate you with the quality sites. That in itself is a form of pay

If your site contents are found interesting by a large number of people then the overflowing cup theory works well. You can’t give too much away on the web, especially on the well socially connected pieces.

There is little reason to worry about what machines think of your site. If humans like it you will do well. Add links whenever it makes sense and, like karma, the link love comes back around. Regularly linking out improves your linkability 🙂

Jeremy Zawodny does not like the tools used to search the blogosphere.

The problems he is running into are based on:

• Writing original posts takes so much more time than just copying other’s information, so the signal to noise ratio is just plain shit
• there are limits to the social capacity of the human brain
• the software is designed to help you find, not filter
• even if the software was better at filtering inevitably the recall would plumit
• sometimes even we don’t know what we are going to be interested in until we see it. How can software predict that without filtering out some of the good stuff?
• The best blogs are good not just because how they state their opinions, but also because they are willing to do the hard work to find that extra bit of information. If information were easier to sort through then we would just find ways to produce & consume more information.

What is the solution? I have always found that taking effort to look through areas not well covered and trust others to catch most the main stuff works well. I also think sometimes you can find your way into other conversations if you give other people excuses to find their way to you. There is no better way to get a scoop than to create the news, story, or idea yourself.

There also seems to be a huge push throughout blogworld to be the first guy with a story. Sometimes this is going to end up being effort wasted, as only one person can be the first person with each story. It is a far more efficient use of time for most people to spend a bit less time flipping through their feeds over and over and over again and trust other people to bubble up important issues.

If the issues do not bubble up then most of the time they probably are not that important. It is also hard to find new information reading the exact same things everyone else does, and most blog authority tools are going to only tell you what others already think is important.