I found the article in my 'to read' pile the other day. The Guardian, back in March, wrote an article listing the 50 most influential blogs in the world (link below).
As I was reading it, I started wondering when most of these blogs were started (though no idea how influence was measured). About 2/3 of them had some sort of date mentioned in their blurb, on their site, or discoverable via their archives. The remaining 1/3 required a trip to the Wayback Machine to get an idea of when the first pages were put up (this would likely push the start date later, right?).
Date spread
Nonetheless, in this rough way, I charted out the years when these blogs were started and noticed a few interesting patterns. For example, almost half of them (about 45%) were started in 2004-2005, which were really they hey-days of blogs (at least to me, based on news coverage of the trend and people at the time). Also, most sites were over 3 years old, meaning that it does indeed take time to build a readership and influence.
Topical categories (I wasn't going to go this far, but this article begged for more analysis)
In terms of subject matter, political blogs were the largest single category (9 of them). Gossip and celebrity sites were the next most popular subject (7). While I thought tech would dominate (there were only 5), there were also many women-focues sites (6), many in diary format. And, lastly, there were some sites focused on causes (4) such as Tibet or environmentalism.
Yes, this makes sense that sites would focus on specific topics to get a steady readership. While politics, gossip, women, and tech were the main categories, there were a sprinkling of topical sites (11), spread out over food, fashion, sex, humour, football, music, blogging, and intellectual matters.
Also, there were some sites that were general (8), revolving around the curiosity and rambling of the author. It didn't seem that the authors had a particularly strong personality, but just were interesting people who pointed out interesting things. There is an area of interest for each writer, though, that most of their posts revolve around, say design, marketing, family, or style. That might provide just enough traction to let them bring in other aspects of their life, yet keep their readership's attention.
Furthermore, of the different topics above, many (10) were basically in the format of personal diaries (yay, blogs still live!). Also, many of them have a single writer, or 2-3 writers. But a few are indeed blogs in the guise of mainstream media (or is it the reverse?) with writer pools, hard-hitting reportage, and oodles of money from advertising and sponsorships.
What do you think of this breakdown? Does it make sense to you?
Eh, I never thought I'd do such meta-analysis of blogs, especially in 2008. But it was a curious article and the data was just there for the picking. Heh.
Link: The world's 50 most powerful blogs | Technology | The Observer
From Prince Harry in Afghanistan to Tom Cruise ranting about Scientology and footage from the Burmese uprising, blogging has never been bigger. It can help elect presidents and take down attorney generals while simultaneously celebrating the minutiae of our everyday obsessions. Here are the 50 best reasons to log on
BONUS: At work, I cringe when we talk about 'bloggers' (that's so 2005). I think that makes us focus on the tool format instead of the folks we want to work with. While some have started saying 'influencers', I find that fawning. The reality is that corporations want relationships with journalist, folks who publish 'media' (video, photos, text, audio) that tell a story about the corporations' products and services.
Debi Jones was thinking that if movie-makers that were not part of the mainstream movie industry are called 'indie movie makers', then why can't non-mainstream media journalists be called 'indie-journalists'? If you look at the categories above, that's indeed what most of these writers are.
I like it and try to use it at work as much as possible. What do you think?
