[Note from Tom: I will get back to Blyopia, I promise. Bob Bly has joined the discussion in the comments to Part I and I put a short retort in there, but Part II is sitting in a rough draft and Part III is even started, so please forgive the intrusion of ... life, business, and ...
New to WME Blogs ... Introducing ... Posts by Greg!
Greg Bell, our new WME Blogs blogger, is a partner in D.S. Leach Consulting, with his wife Dianna Leach. Both of them will be posting about blogs here and about book publishing at our Authors Helping Authors blog, A-ha! More formal announcements and introductions will be coming, but Greg has much to share from his experience in building and publishing blogs (check out his [email protected] blog), so let's just dive right in with Greg's first post on WME Blogs.]
Early in November, David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati posted another quarterly State of the Blogosphere report. Here are some of the basic findings that Sifry and his staff at Technorati have compiled:
- Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs
- The blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days
- About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts
- There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking
- The globalization of the blogosphere continues
Thankfully, Sifry reports that the noise from splogs and other spam in the blogosphere is being filtered more effectively from the Technorati numbers. While the doubling of the size of the blogosphere has decreased in its intensity, much of the decrease may be credited to Technorati’s more effective measures in filtering out splogs. Showing the continued interest in blogging, Sifry reports that more than 50 percent of blogs are active (updated in the past 3 months).
So what can we draw from the latest State of the Blogosphere report? Sifry remarks that "[t]he 'short head' (as opposed to 'the long tail') is still predominantly made up of traditional media sites, like The New York Times, Yahoo! News, CNN, and MSNBC" and reports that there are three blogs in the top 50 in terms of traffic, and 12 in the top 100. However, taking a broader view of the top 5,000 blogs, Sifry notes that as you go further down the list "blogs have essentially taken over, with very few well-funded mainstream media sites listed." Others see it somewhat differently. Like Nicolas Carr over at RoughType, who sees a more negative trend in Sifry's numbers, concluding that "blogs are being squeezed out of the short head and pushed ever deeper into the long tail." Even with their explosive growth in the past few years, the number of blogs sharing the top has been trending downward. According to Carr, this indicates that:
[T]he mainstream media is successfully making the leap from the print world to the online world. The old mainstream is the new mainstream. . . . As for blogs, they’re taking their place--an important place, if a more modest one than some might have hoped--publications, as the new trade journals, newsletters, and zines. The idea of there being an A List of bloggers, then, is something of a misnomer now. The real A List of online media is made up almost entirely of the sites maintained by mainstream media companies. Bloggers seem fated to be, at best, B Listers.
It was inevitable that well-funded, mainstream media would someday really "get it" and start retaking the space, but do most of us really care whether Technorati's rankings show that you are an A- or a B- or even a C- or D-List "blogebrity" with a badge to prove it? No. Most of us are D-List and proud of it! The question is whether in your space in the blogosphere and in your part of the world, is your blog accomplishing the goals you have set for it. If it appears to be reaching the audience you want to reach and you are having or beginning to have a conversation with that audience, then you are an A-List blogger. The long tail is where we live, isn't it?
Based on the "level of influence or authority "of a blog, or the number of distinct blogs that link to a particular blog, which forms the basis of Technorati's ranking, Sifry also has looked for common characteristics of the top bloggers. He believes that the numbers point to a couple of things—top bloggers have been at it for well over a year and post much more often, like 2 or more times daily (he also points out that those big-time blogs that post many times a day (think Engadget and Boing Boing, which are actually the top two) have professional staffs and are becoming more like the aforementioned mainstream media. The fact is that these aren't stunning epiphanies, they're basic Blogging 101:
- It takes some time for your audience to find your blog. You may have to toil in relative obscurity for awhile until you find the right voice to reach them (or Google page rank).
- The more you post, the more likely that audience will find you and keep coming back.
For most of us, who are using a blog as a tool in our business, or perhaps just for the sheer fun of it, these are enough. Blogs have clearly hit the big time, but one of their most powerful and effective features is how they allow the creativity and flexibility to fill niches—the place where many of us will find what we're looking for.
I refrained from using the old chestnut "pardon our dust," but just wanted to let you know that we're working behind the scenes here on WME Blogs to add and reorganize links, rearrange things a bit, and otherwise put into practice some of the things we're telling you to do in the posts. 
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Website vs. Blog debate
Website vs. Blog debate