The Magic Middle of Blogs
I’m late to the party of a gazillion people chattering about what David Sifry of Technorati says about the The State of the Blogoshere. When I (finally) read his post today my pulse raced. I feel alive and energized: my year-old blog ranks in the middle of Sifry’s “Magic Middle.”
Tech: Better Than Sex (recently renamed, previously called Cloudy Thinking today has a Technorati rank of 81,232 (68 links from 30 sites). That qualifies near the middle of Sifry’s “Magic Middle.”
[tease]
The Magic Middle
This realm of publishing, which I call “The Magic Middle” of the attention curve, highlights some of the most interesting and influential bloggers and publishers that are often writing about topics that are topical or niche, like Chocolate and Zucchini on food, Wi-fi Net News on Wireless networking, TechCrunch on Internet Companies, Blogging Baby on parenting, Yarn Harlot on knitting, or Stereogum on music - these are blogs that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing.
At Technorati, we define this to be the bloggers who have from 20-1000 other people linking to them. As the chart above shows, there are about 155,000 people who fit in this group. And what is so interesting to me is how interesting, exciting, informative, and witty these blogs often are. I’ve noticed that often these blogs are more topical or focused on a niche area, like gardening, knitting, nanotech, mp3s or journalism and a great way to find them has been through Blog Finder.
Even so, the stats on the number of blogs are scary. Sifry (part 1) says:
[tease] (emphasis added)
New blog creation continues to grow. We currently track over 75,000 new weblogs created every day, which means that on average, a new weblog is created every second of every day - and 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created. In other words, even though there’s a reasonable amount of tire-kicking going on, blogging is growing as a habitual activity. In October of 2005, when Technorati was only tracking 19 million blogs, about 10.4 million bloggers were still posting 3 months after the creation of their blogs.
In addition to that, about 2.7 million bloggers update their blogs at least weekly.
Sifry’s stats have triggered an avalanche of commentary by both bloggers and the mainstream media. The “Sifry Meme” being mined today on tech.memeorandum.
Steve Rubel gets it right. He points out that some (a VERY few) blogs aim to make money, other blogs are intended to be a marketing device. Rubel’s comment stream (above average) adds the idea that blogs also are a simple, low-cost way to share ideas.
The vast majority of blogs serve as a “Letter to My Friends.” There’s a huge difference between writing a blog vs. email or a written letter. A blog has magic (and major) side effect, because it exponentially expands the bloggers circle of real-world acquaintances.
Through the magic of search engines, folks around the word can easily stumble on almost any given blog. My year-old blog attracts readers from 80+ different countries in any given month.
This month Malta and Ghana on my list of countries. For some reason, The Netherlands currently ranks second to the USA in number of visits to my blog. Don’t ask me why, it baffles me.
I’m a Hobby Blogger. This is what I do instead of playing golf or sailing. I’m not claiming that’s A Good Thing, it just is. When I am not working, I relax by writing. If there’s a small side effect of building a reputation, that’s cool.
I blog because it’s fun. I love ideas and for some reason feel compelled to share what I learn. The fact that I’ve reached “the middle of the (Technorati) middle” is great. Would I like to rank higher? You bet! I am a competitive guy.
The odds I’ll claw my way up the steep and treacherous face of Blog Mountain are long. I am OK with that.