I don’t usually act as a newsbot, but New York Magazine has two very interesting articles about blogging in the February 20th issue. Forget Brett Hull and Mark Messier, Arianna Huffington is my new hero.
Blogs to Riches
The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom.
Two years ago, David Hauslaib was a junior at Syracuse University who was, as he confesses, “totally obsessed with who Paris Hilton was sleeping with.” So he did what any college student would do these days: He blogged about it. Hauslaib began scouring the Web for paparazzi photos of Hilton and news items about her, then posting them on his Website, Jossip.com. (Sample headline: PARIS HILTON SPREADS IT IN THE HAMPTONS.) “My friends got a chuckle out of it, but it didn’t get really big or anything—maybe a few hundred visitors a day,” he says.
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/media/15967/index.html
There are upwards of 27 million blogs in the world. To discover how they relate to one another, we’ve taken the most-linked-to 50 and mapped their connections. Each arrow represents a hypertext link that was made sometime in the past 90 days. Think of those links as votes in an endless global popularity poll. Many blogs vote for each other: “blogrolling.” Some top-50 sites don’t have any links from the others shown here, usually because they are big in Japan, China, or Europe—regions still new to the phenomenon.
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/media/15972/index.html
I usually hate articles about blogging but this is one is great
Blogs to Riches: The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom. Oh, and just for reference while reading the article, Im not an A, B, or C-list blogger. Im whats known as a Z-lister.
The author, Clive Thompson, referencing Clay S…
Reader profile: Where are your readers from? Could you post their geographic profile?
Cray,
Go to the Comment Order Poll of several days ago. If you click on the map, you’ll see where people are from.
Guy
Disgusted,
You should learn from anyone you can. Even someone who disgusts you.
Guy
… Especially from someone who disgusts you.
I have to admit, I like Arianna Huffington for her language, her insights, tackling problems where others fail to notice any.
Her begginings in the blogshere were made of very interesting articles that brought much attention.
Sadly some of this attention was harsh critisisme from those she so skillfully shamed, and her answer was to fall in extremism.
I saw her befor as a true speaker of all… yet she fell in the trap and swung to the far left. Her articles are still a good read, but lost the magic of individuality, speaks for the left and critisizes the right.
Yet I agree, huffington post has been, is, and is yet to be a great blog. Sadly you will attract much of her critics if you indulge her.
Guy, I have nothing against Arianna, but how can you dump Hull and Messier like that? ;-)
Awesome work Guy! You made the DIGG.com front page. Your daily traffic is about to explode (maybe). Great articles- I hate being an entreprenuer ;)
Disgusted,
You ditched 20 years of respect because you disagree with one viewpoint?
Sounds like its a very small sandbox you play in.
Love her or hate her, Arianna builds brands.
That’s no easy task.
Guys, chill out about Arianna. The key sentence is:
“By the end of the year, it was clocking 18 million page views a month and had become the fifth-most-linked-to blog in the world. Its ad rates are at the top of its class, about $10 to $30 for every thousand views.”
If you don’t admire that, I don’t know what to say…
Really interesting article. So it turns out that bogging and indeed all of life, according to the Power Law, turn out to be just like High School. There’s an in crowd and an out crowd. The in crowd has a vested interest in keeping it’s size small to keep from dissipating the benefits of “in crowdness.”
It also brings to mind Apple’s struggles against Microsoft. It’s amazing, Windows is unstable it, it’s extremely vulnerable to attack and it’s ugly. Are they still using that horrible blue color? But everybody uses it. You can’t talk some people into even trying a Mac even though they know they’re nicer looking, not as vulnerable, and cooler. Hmmm.
But surely there is a way to breakthrough else there’d be no new companies and products. Old companies tend focus on maintaining their stats instead of focusing on producing good products. GM comes immediately to mind.
My question, is it possible for a little guy to breakthrough or is the only way to do it Arianna’s way? I.e. with lots of money, which money buys connections, and in the case of blogs links. One of the most amazing things about Arianna’s blog is how many links it got from The Corner when it was first starting out. It seemed like K.Lo was making it her pet project.
The article brings to mind Malcolm Gladwell’s, Tipping Point. So how do you start a blog epidemic? Well you have to infect the right people. The people who contact a lot of others. I guess the first thing you have to focus on is getting a good product. Then somehow you have to infect the right people with it. So how do you infect the right people? Well first you find out who they are then… At this point I don’t know. Come on Guy enlighten us.
And some of you guys need to lighten up. If one post causes you to loose 20 years of respect then your respect is worth nothing. I took Guy to be making an almost tongue in cheek statement with reference to Arianna’s stats, but who cares.
Linkology
Guy Kawasaki just put up a great posting. The top 50 sites and their degrees of interconnectedness.
I havent studied the New Yorkers PDF in depth but its hellacios cool at a glance!
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Marketing Beyond the Gatekeepers
Lately the blogoshere has been buzzing about the New York Magazine article entitled Blogs to Riches – The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom. Hugh Macleod talked about it so did Guy Kawasaki and Darren Rowse and Gawker and…