Technorati's David Sifry continues his quarterly "State of the Blogosphere" report, wherein he sums up the conclusions to be drawn from Technorati's amazing, deep data-set of information on how blogs link to one another and how news propagates through blogs.
Today's installment talks about his the "attention curve" of how many links point to which services has shifted, somewhat to the detriment of big media outlets, and to the benefit of blogs, including newer blogs, that have managed to slide up the curve:
With so may blogs and bloggers out there, one might think that it is a lost cause for new bloggers to achieve any significant audience, that the power curve means that there's no more room left at the top of the "A-List".
Fortunately, the data shows that this isn't the case.
Thanks to the Wayback machine, here's a look at the Technorati Top 100 as it appeared on November 26, 2002 (bear with me if the wayback machine is slow). Then look at it as it appeared on December 5, 2003. And again on November 30, 2004. And again on April 1, 2005. And now look at it today.
Let's take a few examples. Have a look at PostSecret. It is the #3 site on the Technorati Top 100 today, with over 12,000 sites that have linked to it in the last 180 days. It didn't even exist on the chart in April of 2005. Or look at The Huffington Post. It is #5 on the Top 100. It too, didn't exist on the chart in April of 2005. Or look at the #47 blog in April, 2005 Baghdad Burning. This blog still is regularly posting, but has fallen to #304.
Link, Part 1 of this quarter's State of the Blogosphere
(Disclosure: I'm a proud member of Technorati, Inc.'s advisory board)
