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October 08, 2005

Any Falling Tree Can Be Heard

After my talk at Web 2.0 yesterday, I met with Reuters reporter Eric Auchard to go over some of the data from the presentation.  Eric wrote an article about it that I’ve seen pop up in Bloglines a few times this morning. 

Just to clarify a few things here:

* I agree with Mena that there are many blogs that do not have feeds.  That is why we called the post “Which Feeds Matter?” rather than “Which Blogs Matter?”  In fact, the one feed that has over 50,000 Bloglines subscribers (scientifically denoted as “Da Bomb” in the preso), Slashdot.org, is not even a blog.

* As I said in both the last post and the original one in July, I think 1.3 million feeds having at least one subscriber is a huge number of feeds – and therefore blogs -- that “matter,” especially when compared to the universe of sites that were previously thought to matter (as traditionally measured by Nielsen and Comscore).  It’s also impressive that 200,000 new feeds have gained at least one subscriber since July.

* On the other hand, no, the full universe of blogs (or other sites that publish feeds) do not “matter” as much as others.  It’s natural that, as all this new content is created, not all of it will find a regular audience.  Eric made the good point in our discussion that the blogosphere’s audience curve is following the same trends as other media, as well as Web 1.0 sites.  Thus, only 437 feeds (which contain a large number of blogs) have at least 1,000 people subscribing to them, and only 60 have 5,000 or more.   I think this is more the point Eric’s article tried to make than the fact that the rest of the blogosphere is irrelevant.

* Lastly, Eric and I discussed at length the “butterfly effect” that I believe gives any blog the ability to “matter” to other people, which makes the blogosphere different from other media.  This did not make it into his article.  If one blogger says something interesting, no matter how small his audience, that blog can reach a larger audience through other bloggers linking to it and discussing it.  This is partly what makes the blogosphere special and different from mere GeoCities homepages.  (Of course, the more interesting the post, the more likely that site will be to find subscribers if they publish a feed.)

Keep on bloggin’.

Jim Lanzone

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Comments

Good points - the clarification is much appreciated. I think it's the responsibility of content providers with high readership to be searching for those interesting nuggets and passing along to the broader audience. It's a good way to differentiate, and an even better way to win a fleet of writers that will be more than willing to contribute to the better known feeds.

Posted by: Joseph O'Connell | Oct 8, 2005 1:37:15 PM

Hey, I'm glad I went to google's blog and came across a link to this blog site. Beginning to have information overload. Lots of really good info here and will be back again and again. I'm definitely going to bookmark you!

I have a staten island home improvement blog myself. It pretty much
covers home remodeling, and home improvement related stuff.

Come and check it out if you get time :-)

Posted by: http://www.allcitycontracting.com/ | Oct 11, 2005 9:47:51 AM

Sorry to say this, Jim, but I thought the article was pretty terrible. It was imprecise and (perhaps unintentionally) insulting to those of us who might not make the "cut."

First, I didn't at all catch the distinction bet. feeds & blogs in his article (which is important). Auchard refers to subscribers & links in terms of measuring which blogs (or feeds) matter. At first, I thought w. Technorati listing 91 incoming links I was doing well. But then a friend pointed out that you probably meant actual subscribers who've signed up to hear of yr blog updates. Third, Auchard did seem to be saying that if you don't have that single subscriber or more you just "don't matter."

In your post here, it's pretty clear that this is not what you meant. But what you said here is important in clarifying that & it's omission did a great disservice to your overall msg.

I know journalists work on deadline which in turn causes imprecision or outright mistakes. BUt I personally don't think the article or Auchard did especially well by you. That being said, of course any publicity, including imprecise pr, is a good thing.

I wrote a post about Auchard's article which is linked to my name link. I will modify what's there to reflect yr. clarification.

Posted by: Richard Silverstein | Oct 12, 2005 9:30:10 PM

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