The Industry Standard - Techmeme Leaderboard analysis: Is the old-guard A list fading? - Comments

Josh: I address your "Does

Ian Lamont929744 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:14:00 -0700

Josh: I address your "Does it matter?" question on the follow-up post, Techmeme analysis, part II: 15% of sources account for more than 70% of headlines.

Benedikt : Interesting thought, but I think blogging has too large of a dedicated reader and creator population. It's not just hype -- it's really got legs.

Ian Lamont
Managing Editor
The Industry Standard

Could it be that blogging

Benedikt — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:14:07 -0700

Could it be that blogging just reached a new phase (the infamous "trough of disillusionment") in the hype cycle? Those who started with a lot of enthusiasm suddenly realize that they can't keep up the pace, that they have linked to every important news source at least once, that they have written about most topics they were interested in (including cats or babies ;-)? Interesting thing is that the same thing happens in Germany right now. Although it's always been said that the German blogosphere were a few years behind.

@Peter Kafka: That's the

Josh Catone — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:01:27 -0700

@Peter Kafka: That's the first rule of Digg, too. ;)

On the larger point -- does it really matter? A lot of individual bloggers who were (and maybe still are on the Techmeme leader board) have been hired by larger "corporate" blogs -- such as Sarah Perez, Corvida, and Frederic Lardinois to ReadWriteWeb, and MG Seigler to VentureBeat. Who cares where they're blogging?

On a side note: RWW only went "corporate" about a year ago. I was Richard's first full-time hire last July (he hired me part time in May 2007). Before that it was all Richard and a couple of some time guest contributors. I mention this because I still see RWW in the top 10... I still see TechCrunch there... and VentureBeat and GigaOm. These are the old A-Listers -- they're "tech blog networks" now, but they're still staffed by bloggers... so I'm not really sure what the gripe is...

Everyone: Thanks for your

Ian Lamont929744 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:51:00 -0700

Everyone: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Fred Wilson has a related post with an interesting discussion thread. Also, later today I will be publishing some more data relating to Techmeme -- specifically, how many headlined sources are referenced by the service in a 30-day period. I am still waiting for some additional clarification from Gabe, but hope to get this out in the afternoon.

Joining Dots: I think there is a need for such a standalone blogger-oriented service too, or a way to exclude the media companies from the results. I don't have anything against TechCrunch, the NYT, or other media companies (after all, I work for one!) but sometimes the more informed opinions and observations are taking place on the indie blogs, and it would be helpful to highlight those conversations and bloggers more often.

Ian Lamont
Managing Editor
The Industry Standard

Another thing that I want to

Bilal Hameed — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:26:12 -0700

Another thing that I want to comment here is that. http://startupmeme.com was added to TechMeme index about a month or so back. And while we continued to get ourselves included into BlogBurst, Newstex, TOPIX, Google News and other such prominent properties, TechMeme kicked us out of its index without assigning a reason or responding to request for comment via email.

The funny thing about it is, that Startup Meme got included into TechMeme while we have around 800 visitors on average per day and has been removed from TechMeme when the average visitors per day have soared to 8000 mark.

It would be great to see a

Joining Dots — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:07:23 -0700

It would be great to see a TechBlogger alongside TechMeme that consisted only of posts from individual bloggers or amateur groups (no visible sponsorship). I used to click through a lot of links on TechMeme. These days, I scan the headlines and there is rarely more than a couple worth clicking. Partly because the page is often half-filled with debate about a single news article (e.g. will MS ever buy Yahoo). I now use Hacker News - http://news.ycombinator.com/ - as my primary source for keeping up to date with tech news. Find the content more interesting.

The one thing that's not

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira509894 — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:07:59 -0700

The one thing that's not here is that Gabe does weight the sources, and has admitted that on more than one occasion in comments sections. News blogs weight heavier that blogs that focus on in-depth reviews and commentary. Pro blogs weight heavier than non-pro, as he indicated to Yuvi at the Stat Bot (http://thestatbot.com/2008/05/27/techcrunch-a-w-statistics-almost-all-st...), but Louis Gray is climbing and he really meets neither of those criteria.

First rule of Techmeme.

Peter Kafka — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:42:35 -0700

First rule of Techmeme. Always write about Techmeme.

I noticed that Marketing

Andy Beal — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:31:19 -0700

I noticed that Marketing Pilgrim used to be in the leaderboard, because of the quality of news and any links pointing to the post. The quality is still there--if not better--but unless others in the Top 100 link to the story, we have no chance of making the list. It's become very self-sustaining/insular.

In order for this to matter,

Jordan Golson882676 — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:02:01 -0700

In order for this to matter, it would require taking the TechMeme leaderboard, like the Technorati list before it, as some indicator of success or notoriety.

That may be giving it more credit than it deserves.

Techmeme Leaderboard analysis: Is the old-guard A list fading?

Ian Lamont — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:42:32 -0700

The Techmeme Leaderboard is a valuable tool for tracking the influencers of the tech world. However, over the last few months an interesting trend has emerged: A-list bloggers are dropping off.

Take a look at the Techmeme Leaderboard from last October and compare it with the full results from yesterday's Leaderboard. Robert Scoble's Scobleizer, which used to be #55 on the leaderboard, has dropped to #70. Others have dropped off completely, including Nick Carr's Rough Type, which used to hold the #35 position, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, which ranked 86, and Doc Searls, who ranked 97 back in October.

What's going on here? Certainly, seasonal factors are coming into play. Nick Carr, for instance, announced in June that that he was putting Rough Type "on ice" over the summer months. News events, product releases, and conferences may impact the makeup of the board as well, depending on the expertise and opinions of the sources, and how they are picked up by other sources.

But one thing that I find particularly interesting is that the old-school A-listers aren't being displaced by the many talented B-to-Z listers out there. Rather, the Leaderboard is increasingly populated by mainstream publishers, tech blog networks, and corporate blogs and PR sites. There are a few personal blogs on the July 15 Leaderboard that weren't present last October, such as those written by Jason Calcanis and Dare Obasanjo. But I see these as exceptions. (Also, Calcanis is a member of the old A-list establishment, who is likely on the Leaderboard now because he received a spike of inbound links after announcing his blogging "retirement" last week).

Another interesting fact about the Leaderboard is the cutoff point for inclusion has risen. Techmeme assigns "presence" scores to the hundreds of blogs that have featured headlines. The methodology listed on the site has this definition for presence:

"A source's presence is the probability that a random Techmeme headline at a random time over the past month was published by that source."

At first I thought some sort of random sampling method was used, but Techmeme founder Gave Rivera told me this is not so. Rather, the Leaderboard calculates the entire census of headlines in a 30-day period, weights them for the amount of time spent on Techmeme (measured every five minutes), and then calculates the 100 most-used sources. The many links in the Techmeme "Discussion" blocks are not counted -- only articles or posts whose headlines are shown on the Techmeme front page.

In October, the lowest presence value was 0.17% for the #100 position, the Syndney Morning Herald. Yesterday, the lowest presence value was 0.20% for 9 to 5 Mac. In other words, even if a blogger's presence was enough to make the top 100 in October, there's no guarantee that the same presence value would get them on the leaderboard yesterday. There were 10 such sources that scored below .20% in October, including Doc Searls.

When I asked Rivera about the changing presence threshold, he responded with this:

"Nothing profound to say about the change. For all I know, it may have been both higher and lower in the interim. Things move around a lot."

However, when I took a look at the presence levels at one-month intervals starting on October 1, 2007, there seemed to be the start of a pattern: Lower thresholds (between 0.15% and 0.18%) persisted from October 1 to May 1. Since June 1, 0.19% and 0.20% presence levels have been the norm.

If the high presence thresholds persist, individual bloggers who are unaffiliated with any network or news organization are less likely to make the Leaderboard, regardless of whether they are A-listers or Z-listers. Rivera had an interesting observation about the way Techmeme and the Leaderboard work. He said that "in general, top publishers get a major share of the headline space because talent, vigilance, reputation, fame, and most importantly, access to breaking news is not evenly distributed." I don't think talent has much to do with the makeup of the Leaderboard, but his comments about vigilance and access to breaking news are accurate. TechCrunch and the New York Times have teams of writers working on new material all the time, and can leverage their names to get access to news and sources. How many individual bloggers can keep up with the pace of posting and get the same level of access? None that I know of.

What's your take on the Techmeme Leaderboard, or any other service that ranks the influence of bloggers and other publishers? Is there a need for a leaderboard that ranks individual bloggers? If so, what should the criteria be?

July 17 UPDATE: I have a follow-up post, Techmeme analysis, part II: 15% of sources account for more than 70% of headlines

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