The worlds 50 most powerful blogs by the Observer. Use Eliza next time.
It’s Sunday, it’s sunny and I’m at the computer typing because I’m grumpy.
This morning the Grobserver has another “top bloggers” list - the most powerful 50 bloggers in the world. This one is as self-absorbed as all the others, being a (drum roll, hold breath, straighten shoulders, salute the Grobserver) list of (taran-tara):
The world’s 50 most powerful blogs
I hate this sort of list in the national media.
The last one I looked at was the Evening Standard’s moronic “New Media London Top 50” list in October 2007. That included Tom Coates, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie and Alex Hilton. They are all good bloggers, but the “well informed media people” who compiled it had missed out Pete Cashmore of Mashable who was no. 8 on Technorati at the Time.
They may say: but we didn’t know, he’s geeky and we’d never heard of him. Precisely.
Now you know why such lists should not be compiled by individuals of species homo-sapiens-sapiens genus metropoli-mediatartus.
Some Features of a List of Top Blogs
- Quotes measurements as if they mean something, but instead just succeeds in looking ill-informed by using different measurements in different places. So what if “Page Views”, “Hits”, “Visitors”, “People”, “Unique Visitors” all sound different - it doesn’t matter, ya?
- Geographical blinkers, like some racehorses and George Bush. 16 of the 50 most powerful blogs by Brits or based here? I don’t think so.
- Quotes blogs that have usually previously appeared in the MSM (apart from the “author’s darlings” selection included).
The Grobserver List
While I’m being grumpy, I note that only one of the authors of this list appears to have a blog. Hmmm.
(For the record, Anna Pickard. Hi Anna.)
A few questionable inclusions
- Marbury is in - it is a 3 month old British commentary blog on the US Election. PoliticalBetting, perhaps Britains best political website with much US Election coverage, a specially organised night during one of the primaries, and 1 million page views a month, is not in. Nor are blogs such as the Daily Kos or dozens of other top US Political Blogs.
- The FWord is in. An excellent niche blog - but the world’s most powerful 50? Come on, boys and girls.
- Private and Secret Diary. It’s a one man Norfolk version of the Archers, which isn’t even in the Technorati top 50,000. Why?
- Bean Sprouts. Good blog, but technorati ranking of 27,000. 409 visitors a day (OK call it 800 as Sitemeter misses around half). 84 RSS subscribers. Most powerful 50 in the world - what are you on?
These 4 shouldn’t feel got at if you find this list. All damn good blogs that are being misdescribed by the Grobserver (as are about 20 others).
If you’d said “50 blogs which we find interesting” you’d have no problem - but why all this “world’s top 50 most powerful blogs” self-puffery?
“Power Bloggers” List Recipe for people with Contacts
Here’s my recipe for the next list.
- Keep the list down to 50 or so (don’t exhaust the meme).
- Take a few (say 20-25%) obviously top blogs (careful to leave a different equally good selection out for next time).
- Add in an eclectic selection from the Technorati Top 1000 (or top 50000+) - need to be able to do different lists for next year/next month/next week/this afternoon.
- Add a sprinking of niche blogs very few people have heard of but which the compilers think deserve to be influential.
- If it’s for the Grobserver, remember to spell at least one blog incorrectly to fit with editorial policy - for example “Peteite Anglaise“.
Wrapping Up
Next time please save the money, save the administration, save the hassle, and save me the stress. Four suggestions:
- Try (just once) my algorithm above.
- Don’t use such an idiotic headline.
- Give the byline to Max.
- Don’t mention hills in north London.
OK. You can go out to play now.
Tags: guardian, observer, grobserver, Jessica Aldred, Amanda Astell, Rafael Behr, Lauren Cochrane, John Hind, Anna Pickard, Laura Potter, Alice Wignall, Eva Wiseman[tags]guardian, observer, grobserver, Jessica Aldred, Amanda Astell, Rafael Behr, Lauren Cochrane, John Hind, Anna Pickard, Laura Potter, Alice Wignall, Eva Wiseman[/tags]
Categories: Internet / Technical, Knockabout, Media, Online Media
Matt, I couldn’t get the link to open to read the list from today’s paper. I wanted to check it out.
Matt,
More pedantry, apart from my previous comments, your red links are as bad as………….
I am sure you’re getting the message; something’s wrong with your links.
I look in most days (different IPs) and this is the first time I’ve come across this prob. Please fix as I enjoy following the links.
STB.
ps apart from that have a nice weekend!
STB
I’ll plead guilty on this one; I forgot to put a link in.
On this theme red is what it does with italics, and it has taken me a bit of time to get used to using them very sparingly - but I like being able to give a violent emphasis with a red bold word.
The blog has been going really well and the audience is broadening (the WW audience profile is more like a newspaper site than most political blogs, i.e., more general public and a less dominant share of politicos - so I have more people coming in direct from search engines to read a single article). So I think it’s time to bite the bullet and underline the links as per web convention - even though I really like the cool (literally) green colour and smooth effect of no underlines.
I’ve added the link you couldn’t find, and made the change to underline the links. To me it is a bit overpowering. I may try taking the underline of the menu element, which will require some stylesheet mods. Ug.
What do you think?
Been a long weekend, with setting up the Stump and doing the analysis of Feb logfiles.
And then hearing all sorts of people twittering away from SXSW doesn’t help. Maybe next year.
Don’t tell me, Mr Montgomerie has set this one up. I note he’s not on the A-List there. In his haughty condescension and sense of self-importance, he really is the Sean Gabb (remember him?) de nos jours.
Anon
If you’re referring to the Evening Standard list, then no it wasn’t him.
It was a group of 50 “New Media Influencers” in a total selection of 1000 “most inflential Londoners” - 50 from 20 different sectors. The whole thing was set up and compiled by the Evening Standard.
The problem with the list was that it didn’t define what ‘power’ means. If your target audience is ‘Dave Cole’, none of the blogs they came up with matter. It may be that MPs read a select group of blogs every day, so if that’s your target audience, that’s what you need to cover. Of course, if it’s a local government issue in Sandwell, the blog that matters is Tom Watson.
There has also been (so far as I know) little work done on importance attached to blog opinions. It may be that fewer people read (say) Westminster Wisdom than Sinclair’s Musings (I have no idea if that’s accurate) but that the readership of WW is more willing to accept WW’s views than the readership of SM will take Matt Sinclair’s views.
Equally, it is hard to compare something like Iain Dale with something like Matt Wardman; they are too different.
I don’t think it actually means anything - having chatted with a couple of the people I linked to, the headline is ridiculous and was probably written by a subeditor hyping to the max.
What is a “powerful” blog is an interesting questions. I’d define “power” in terms of ability to stimulate change.
Is Guido powerful because he can make government ministers take notice? I’d call Iain “influential” rather than powerful.
OTOH it was Political Betting that had the power to raise doubts over Ming Campbell with one article in the FT. I’d call that authority not power - and it is probably more effective.
Something like Mashable.com is powerful (can come close to making or breaking websites - as it is a focus of the social media community), and can create social movements.
I’d probably bring in these elements:
- Strength of blog brand.
- Character of blog brand - broad or narrow focus and can it make people DO things.
- Traffic and shape of traffic (e.g., broad or niche). This blog has a traffic profile half way between most political blogs (which have politico traffic mainly) and newspaper sites (broader) - mainly because of the breadth of content.
- Does it influence movers and shakers.
Thanks for the comment.
Matt