The Cold Statistics Of Recent Discussion
Time to do the number, to reality-check the hype and marketing
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house." -- Robert Heinlein
This is a quick check of unique visitors overall from the previous gatekeepers discussion:
doc.weblogs.com : approximately 150
gapingvoid.com : approximately 75
weblog.burningbird.net: approximately 50
tech.memeorandum.com: approximately 36
Last week: Technorati Rank: 28,942 (151 links from 66 sites)
This week, after being first gatekeepered by Doc: Technorati Rank: 23,579 (170 links from 78 sites)
[Flame-retardant: Rank isn't everything. But it's an objective measurement, of some rough utility.]
Maybe 20 new subscribers, most of whom will subsequently be bored away :-).
No, I will not be vaulted to the A-list by a single gatekeeper link. However, the silly reaction I'll parody as "Who me? What's a gatekeeper anyway? We're all gatekeepers, comrade, all animals are equal here down on the blog farm", is belied by the simple fact that far more people heard me this week on the topic, than have in the past.
Bonus link, via "Squash": "Our sad blog decision":
February 15, 2006
Our sad blog decisionThis morning we've had to take a difficult decision. Most of you will be aware that for eight or nine months, we've been writing a blog called Razor, for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Unfortunately, we've found it consuming an increasing amount of our time - three to four hours a day - in research and writing and managing comments.
We've worked out that we've been earning less than 30c a word, compared to the 60c per word average that most IT writers earn. Writing for magazines, we generally earn around $1 per word. We haven't seen much of that $1 per word stuff, however, because blogging leaves us with very little time to do freelance writing. The effects on the Bleeding Edge balance sheet have been pretty drastic.
Additional memesterbaiting:
The dismal traffic numbers also point to another little trade secret of the blogosphere, and one missed by Judge Posner and all the other blog-evangelists when they extol the idea that blogging allows thousands of Tom Paines to bloom. As Ana Marie Cox says: "When people talk about the liberation of the armchair pajamas media, they tend to turn a blind eye to the fact that the voices with the loudest volume in the blogosphere definitely belong to people who have experience writing. They don't have to be experienced journalists necessarily, but they write - part of their professional life is to communicate clearly in written words."
[Note professional life maps to income!]
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in cyberblather , statistics | on February 18, 2006 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink)
Well, I suppose the Officially Sanctioned Discussion has moved on, so we can do our research in relative obscurity.
viz the news from down under, viz FT article, viz NY mag article, viz Slate article,
I guess we should return our seats to the upright position for the coming crash. ;-]
I gave you an extra incoming link to boost your Technorati rating. Who knows if it'll ever show up!
"I get on my knees and pray we won't be fooled again
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
- The Who
Bleeding Edge was an OK column but not worth time to subscribe to. I read it from the pages of The Age which I use as my main news reference for all things here in Oz. But as a general rule I try not to read about the same thing more than twice - so Razor would often get overlooked because I get my main cover tech news elsewhere. I don'y like echo chambers.
I admit it I am an info junkie, I am happiest swimming in a sea of information and drowning in data.
But face it, there is so much stuff I am not going to check every new headline coz I no-one has the time or energy to read everything they want. And technology will not help - unless it is a neurally linked RSS reader.
If you are blogging for money and it doesn't involve boobs you had better be very rich or have a big inheritance.
There is a better way to elevate the 'good stuff' from people who are not as well known (yet) - we just still need to build the tools and systems to properly expose them, as opposed to relying on those who already have power to bring more people into their ranks, diminishing the power they have achieved.
Most A-listers are not like Doc Searls and Robert Scoble - who care about people over power or politics. But the good news is that they lead by example - an example that I expect others will begin to follow.
The motivations of people within the system and the design of the system itself are the two elements that can be influenced - so let's continue to influnce them! I hope to have a team together working on the tools within 3 months and released within 6...