I guess I just get discouraged by the reality that one tenth of the progressivve blogs out there get 99 percent of the traffic. Admittedly, as blogging goes, I've done pretty well. But the hierarchy itself depresses me, and it's even more depressing when those at the top of it continue to deny that there is a hierarchy or that they benefit from it. It's kinda like having their cake and eating it too.
I also wish that people would behave differently, and look further than who gets the most visits or links. But people don't seem to change. They're interested in who's got the biggest or the most, and that's about it.
When I only read blogs, I definitely found that I mostly read the big blogs out of laziness. Because they are linked to so much more frequently, a random surfer tends to find themselves back at atrios or kos over and over again. Now that I blog myself, one of the real joys is discovering the personalities behind the smaller blogs. Putting them on my blogroll reminds me to check back to them once in a while even if nobody has linked to them recently. Sometimes I do a little snooping on sitemeter and are shocked that much better written blogs than mine actually have lower traffic. Of course, there are also much worse blogs than mine with higher traffic.
The megablogs does provide a service in setting the topic de jour, much like how the NYT op-eds always get written about even if they're not that interesting. But in general I agree with you in that smaller blogs can do themselves a favor exploring other smaller blogs, both in terms of discovering more interesting writing and in terms of bolstering their own readership.
In this context, it's important to remember Clay Shirky's study which found that the blogosphere had "a long tail". It is a power curve, yes, and the top blogs get orders of magnitude more than the lower blogs, yes, but still, the blogosphere has "a long tail", meaning that the lower ranked blogs, combined, have way more traffic than the top sites. This is not true of every set of items whose distribution follows a power curve, but it is true of weblogs. All those sites that only get 200 visitors a week, all combined, have more traffic than the top 200 sites.
Shirky's essay "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality" is worth reading if the topic at all interests you:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/
p...law_weblog.html
Thanks for passing on the link, Lawrence. Some really interesting numbers and graphs, and now I finally know where all those "80/20" generalizations come from.
I'm not entirely convinced about the "long tail." I mean, I guess it exists, and that if you add us all together we more traffice than the top bloggers. But how does that add up to influence? In other words, does the dog wag the tail, or does the tail wag the dog.
Good post.
Traffic is weird. I get about 200 unique visitors a day, which is obviously a drop in the bucket, but it's about 199 more people listening to what I have to say than before I started blogging.
I know some bloggers do a lot of self-promotion - I'm amazed at the frequency with which people email the 'big boys' asking for links. I don't think I've ever done that. I suppose if I did, I could have more traffic, but I'm way too lazy.
One time I did get an 'Instalanche,' which everybody seems to just about cream their shorts over - "Welcome Instapundit readers! While you're here, feel free to look around at some of my other posts!" Come on, dude - for one thing, I guarantee if I follow a link to your blog from Instapundit, I feel perfectly free to peruse your site. Second, act like you've been there before! It's kind of pathetic to be begging people not to just look at the linked post and move on.
When I got the Instapundit traffic spike, I felt kind of violated. All of a sudden, all these strangers were at my blog, and I kind of wanted them to go away.
One thing I keep forgetting in all this. Actually two things. People are sheep. They're also lazy. They'll read the top blogs and let it go at that, because they figure that's all they need to know anyway.
Dadahead,
I agree. I just wouldn't feel comfortable sending a link-soliciting email. And what good does it do anyhow? Unless getting slammed with a few thousand eyeballs for a few hours pleases your ego. When I feel the urge to do some self-promotion I leave more comments and trackbacks.
And Terence,
People who don't confuse popularity with merit probably get more out of blogs. They might not be in the majority, but I'm glad that enough of them exist for us smaller blogs.
"But how does that add up to influence? In other words, does the dog wag the tail, or does the tail wag the dog."
That goes back to the question of where society's fashions are set - in conversations among friends, or by the media. Clearly, both groups have influence, but which has more influence?
Often companies have spent millions to launch a new product, only to see it fail because the word-of-mouth out there in real America said that the product sucked. And nearly every study ever done on marketing has suggested that the strongest form of advertising is word-of-mouth, something which drives marketers crazy since they can't control it.
The small scale weblogs with 100 or 200 visitors a week can be thought of as groups of friends having conversations with each other. The larger blogs can be thought of as big media. The question of who has more influence will likely go on forever.
I feel like the best way to subvert the dominant blog hierarchy is to return to the roots of what makes blogging work -- the power of the masses. On a daily basis I watch the following links (they all have RSS feeds):
http://blogdex.net/
http://www.daypop.com/top/
http://www.blogpulse.com/05_08_1...8_12/
links.html
http://del.icio.us/popular
http://www.bloglines.com/toplinks
All of them track the daily internet/blogosphere zeitgeist in one way or another, but with one thing in common: they count a link from a "top blogger" the same as they would count a startup blog, or even some kid with a livejournal.
Anyway, check those out if you get the chance.
Was checking out Republic of T today when I followed this reference. Never posted a comment before, so we'll see if I do it correctly.
When we started our website, patriot daily, just about 2 months ago, we were new to blogs and websites. We put together criteria for the types of blogs that we were looking for - generally substance not popularity. Didn't even know of the existence of top rated blogs. So, our links and posted stories are not limited to the top blogs. And, we have had rave comments from people, so perhaps people are not as fixated on the top blogs as are the news reports.
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