The supposed top blog is http://boingboing.net/, which is just a clone of ebaumsworld.com and a hundred other joke/time waster sites like it. I do find it amusing that because the authors of these other sites don't sell conferences their sites are not considered "blogs".
The next most popular "blogs" are what I call product review sites. engadget.com, paidcontent and Techcrunch would be the biggest examples of this in the tech world. engadget.com/Techcrunch are fast growing product review sites that have a huge part of their distribution in RSS. Now what makes these sites so extremely popular? In my opinion they are popular for the same reason that news alerts are popular. NEW up to the date Information can be found extremely quickly and its very to the point. The only downside is these sites don't have a very good search so you can find old information. So in summary these sites aren't blogs, they are just product review sites with a far far better interface/distribution system.
Next you have corporate blogs, or people associated with a company. Scoble and Tara hunt, Om Malik etc all got big not because of what they had to say but of who was behind them. Each of these "bloggers" represents a corporation. I can draw comparisons to my blog here. No one who actually uses my site comes here to read this. This blog is read by SEO's, CEO's/Executives and the Media. I would sum it up as saying, in the old world you would release press releases and try and get publicity. Now if you have a blog and its widely read it doesn't matter what you say people automatically think its important. Blog popularity acts in the same way as google pagerank, the more readers you have the more publicity anything you say gets.
I think of blogs as nothing more then a distributed forum. Each blog represents a forum thread, and what sites like DIGG.com, Techmeme and bloglines etc are trying to do is recombine these separate threads into a forum again. The Digg.com model has no chance of winning, as less then 60 people out of 800,000 supposed daily users decide what everyone reads. The winner in this game will be the company that creates a personalized view of the "blogosphere". As i said before this would be accomplished by allowing users to filter out articles about games, graphics, movies etc etc etc.
So at the end of the day if you want to create a popular consumer facing website based on information/educating users you need to constantly display NEW up to the date Information and be very to the point with little to no advertising/distractions.
June 26, 2006 at 8:09 am |
Is that 60 people figure really a problem? Considering that there is really only a limited number of relevant articles that could make it to the front page of digg on a given day, it’s not surprising that so few people are responsible for the majority of them. Some people are always going to be more dedicated than others.
June 26, 2006 at 8:25 am |
I would like to think that a popular blog will not automatically be considered as important. At least I hope so!
Currently I am hooked up to your blog, although I don’t know any of your websites. Just to see for a while what you think and talk about. That’s the great thing about this way of syndication. You can opt-in and opt-out at any time!
You did not mention the plain, simple personal blog, which can be popular at times but often have no relevance in terms of any new information.
June 26, 2006 at 12:33 pm |
Well blogs are a distributed forum but not only. What is interesting is its versality and low cost.
It is not a revolution, simply an evolution.
June 26, 2006 at 4:03 pm |
Good point about the disassembly and reassembly of basic message boards to convey the same information. I still think that most of these things are relatively niche though. I mean do you see your parent, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc… using blogs for info, blogging, posting other content… probably a very small percentage…
http://www.thankgoditsthursday.com
June 27, 2006 at 12:48 am |
Markus,
This is off topic but I thought it might make an interesting post and I’d like to get your thoughts (Markus) on the site and Adbrite themselves. I think they offer a lot of good opportunities for people looking to buy cheap traffic for their sites. It takes some searching around but you can find sites that match the product you’re looking to sell or it’s a good way to supplement your sites with an additional revenue stream as a publisher. We’ve created an AdbriteGuide site, with tips and advice on how to have success, either as an advertiser or publisher. Please check it out and let me know what you think: http://www.adbriteguide.com/.
June 27, 2006 at 2:42 am |
Markus,
If I may ask, what kind of solution you think will have a right future?
June 27, 2006 at 8:08 am |
Your writting is excellent, to the point of reading and nothing more. It simply just amuses me as to how you could just put off a site where so many users visit and post articles the think is good. Now a success of a site is the number of the users that visit the site. If the owners of the site has to keep it running then they have to put in ads.
Do your homework before putting up such good reviews.
http://www.irin.co.uk
June 27, 2006 at 4:28 pm |
Jean, just because it is good today doesn’t mean it will be the best tomorrow. No doubt the digg will attempt personalization at some point and then all is good. But for now there is a glaring opportunity for someone else to come in and beat them.
June 27, 2006 at 7:12 pm |
“The Digg.com model has no chance of winning, as less then 60 people out of 800,000 supposed daily users decide what everyone reads.”
I disagree. Look at http://www.elatable.com/blog/?p=5
Bradley Horowitz says that only 1% of users will create, and 10% will synthesize.
June 27, 2006 at 10:17 pm |
I’ve been saying that a blog is just a method of organizing content on websites in a certain manner for years…
June 28, 2006 at 10:33 am |
I think what Digg does is simply remove the resellers (reBloggers) out of the picture. Usually an original post is reblogged by several others until it reaches to reader. For instance I may reBlog about this certain blog post which would increase this posts reach to readers of my blog. Aggregating everything under one roof essentially solves this issue.
June 29, 2006 at 3:20 pm |
Blogging is the same old thing? BoingBoing is a clone of eBaum? Digg.com model has no chance of winning? You have got to be kidding me. On the other hand, learning a lot reading your other posts when you stick to what you know, great stuff.
July 1, 2006 at 5:26 pm |
Funnily enough, I have this blog bookmarked in the “Forums” folder of my bookmarks. It is true – I don’t really see a difference myself between a blog post and a thread on a forum.
May 31, 2007 at 9:22 pm |
Udacha ty menja ne pokidaes. Darell Coral.
July 14, 2007 at 9:38 am |
I say Im not that kind of perso. Lexie Martta.
October 18, 2007 at 7:56 pm |
Don’t care, they still have a good idea
October 21, 2007 at 8:30 pm |
your way to beautiful gir. Mica Kingsley.
June 3, 2008 at 10:08 pm |
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