Blogging the Chasm
Last week I mentioned an article in New York Magazine that laments the inequity of the blogging world. Like (seemingly) every mainstream article about our favorite hobby, this triggered an outpouring of opinions from the blogging community. Without pointing any fingers (read: I didn’t think to save any links), many of these were concerned with “fixing” the problem. But is anything really broken? Greg Yardley nails it:
Sorry, but I roll my eyes whenever I read articles that moan about power-law distributions in blogging. It’s such a non-story - power-laws occur everywhere people get together and socialize. Mix first-mover advantage with quality and stir. The real story, which no one writes about, is that the blogging power-laws are more easily broken than any other medium’s. Quintessential example: TechCrunch, which took off like a missile.
Greg’s example of TechCrunch (which is the same as my own) illustrates a principle that any would-be A-lister had better adhere to: focus on a niche. If you’re already a celebrity, you might be able to attract a large audience by rambling on about whatever meets your fancy. But for the rest of us, Geoffrey Moore’s seminal hi-tech marketing techniques hold true. In other words, for your blog to succeed in the mainstream market you would do well to approach it exactly as you would a startup company. Obviously you need great execution and a healthy dose of luck, but even then the need for razor-like focus eludes most.
By this metric, neither Greg nor I has much chance at A-list stardom because our blogs are simply too broad. And this leads me to my second point: both of us focus on basically the same topics and write posts of similar length and frequency. I’ve been blogging for a few months longer and I have far more subscribers on Bloglines. And yet he has over twice as many links as I do. Something’s fishy here, and clearly it’s not the “dirty A-list blogging elite” who is to blame for my lack of influence. Greg Yardley, give me back my links, you scoundrel!
2 Comments »
Trackback URL RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
The discrepancy comes from that whole Google Click-to-Call beta I spotted in November or so. That one off-the-chart post really skews the numbers - got a ton of links from it but hardly any subscribers.
Comment by Greg Yardley — 2/21/2006 @ 8:42 pm
Actually I think that a lot more people link to your blog, in general. I’m starting to think that my use of Bloglines subscribers as a proxy for this blog’s popularity is wrongheaded. I often wish that I got more links, and that might be a more appropriate “marketing focus”.
Comment by Matt — 3/1/2006 @ 2:37 pm