In a cover story that will surely generate tons of conversation and alienate lots of bloggers (now there's a way to sell print mags), New York Magazine crunches the numbers that make the blogosphere tick. They analyzed both bloggers who were successful and unuccessful in their attempts to build an audience. In fact, the piece is so controversial that both Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis refused to be interviewed. Shock the nation!
The article cites a Clay Shirky analysis of 433 blogs. He found that there are enormous “inequities” in the blogosphere - a power-law curve. In other words, according to Shirky a very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links and almost all others have very few sites pointing to them.
New York Mag also discovered three blog success “formulas”: accidental tourists (those who stumbled into blogging), blog networks, boutique bloggers that find a niche and stick with it. Last but not least they note that this whole subject is a major hot-potato with bloggers. Lord knows, I have discovered this the hard way. However, it taught me a lot and changed my thinking. We all are important - always.
The fact is that one reason this so-called inequity is covered ad infinitum is because marketers and media (bloggers included) still rely on old-school approaches to measuring the impact of this new medium. We're trained as humans to look for the biggest apes in the jungle. However, that's not how this Cluetrain world always works.
First of all there are bloggers that can come out of nowhere and join the so-called elite group of top-ranked bloggers. Look at TechCrunch. It is rapidly rising up the charts.
Second, a blogger with two readers can become a reader with thousands in an instant and then fall back down to zero and then back to thousands again two months from now - or never again. Does that mean he/she is unimportant? Not.
Finally, this so-called A-list changes constantly. Go back to 2002 and look at the list of top blogs. Many of these are no longer on the list. Does this mean they failed? Hogwash. We all live in the same yellow submarine and that's the Court of Google - our judge and jury.
So, here's a secret. The list doesn't matter. It's like a Billboard Top 100. Tomorrow we won't be singing Bill Halley's Rock Around the Clock. So, can we all stop with the A,B,C's and move on or is too much at stake financially? We are bloggers, hear us roar. We all matter - today and always. End of story. E pluribus unum.
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