Weblogs and Popularity
I’ve been wondering how Bacon’s is going to select which weblogs to monitor. Someone started a brief discussion about that on Newslib today.
Popularity in the blogosphere is a complicated topic. Many people and sources rank blogs based on the number of readers or subscribers, but that’s not always the best measure of popularity or the best reason to monitor certain weblogs.
Take the Special Libraries Association News Division weblog as an example. It probably doesn’t have nearly as many readers as popular blogs like Talking Points Memo, Instapundit, Scripting News, ResourceShelf, beSpacific, LISNews, or Infomaniac: Behind the News, but if you’re interested in what’s happening with the SLA News Division, that’s going to be one of the best sources for you or Bacon’s to follow. There are thousands, if not millions, of niche blogs like that.
Relevance is important, too. I doubt many of the mainstream, popular bloggers would write about any number of topics I monitor daily for my job, but there might be a less popular weblog that’s right on target. The value of following that is much greater than of knowing what the top bloggers are saying. Besides, how likely are they to write about what I have to monitor?
