Jul 08 2005

C0nservative Blog Swarm

Published by at 10:49 pm under All General Discussions

I have to admit, tracing back links to one’s site provides some amazing bits of news that I would have missed if I hadn’t been looking at who links to the Strata-Sphere. While visiting A Typical Joe I ran across this post on Chris Bowers recent blog survey results and the fact that smaller conservative blogs, like this one, can dominate en masse.

Conservative Blog Sprawl Is A Serious Threat To Progressive Blogosphere Dominance
by Chris Bowers

Last month, I posted an article entitled Aristocratic Right-Wing Blogosphere Stagnating. Among other things, the article noted that while left wing blogs received significantly more total traffic than right-wing blogs, there were actually significantly more right-wing blogs in existence. This article takes a closer look at this phenomenon, which in all likelihood provides the lefty blogosphere with more influence nationally, but allows the righty blogosphere with greater local influence. This is a real problem that progressives should be aware of, and which we need to build infrastructure to deal with.

For starters, I should note that this is the most comprehensive survey I have ever done of blogosphere traffic. This is because I wanted to examine the deeper regions of the political blogosphere–the blogosphere sprawl–rather than just those blogs with the most traffic. For the survey, I looked at the two hundred and fifty most trafficked, politically focused blogs on the Blogads traffic rankings that could be justifiably classified as either “right” or “left” wing.

Well, consider the fact many of us do not have blog ads (or want them) and I think he will find more conservative sites than he thinks. Anyway, Chris is learning what I had predicted would be the case last month when I ran across his debate with Patrick Ruffini. Same thing happens when you compare a tennis ball with the same volume of sand. Guess which one has the greater surface area?

I could relate to one comment by ‘Joe’ that had me rolling.

I’m definitely a smaller blog (today I fell from Marauding Marsupial to Adorable Little Rodent; disappointed, I have to remember that just weeks ago I was happy to become a Flappy Bird) and my experience tells me Bowers’ observation is true.

Last week, prior to my business trips, vacation and demise of my computer I had made it to within the top 500 sites – quite a success for one month old blog. But technology giveth, and it taketh away. Lack of postings for a week and I dropped down into the mid 2,000’s!

UPDATE:

Brainster and I both had come to the same conclusion on this as well. We felt the more numerous conservative blogs would generate more traffic (and ideas and creativity) than the socialist modeled uber blogs on the left. He has an in depth ‘told you so’ on it.

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