Comments on: Original reporting featured in 13% of posts in Technorati Top 10 blogs; TechCrunch contains highest ratio

By: Pramit Singh

Pramit Singh — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:57:32 +0000

Hello Simon,

What is th point of this study other than dissing on fellow bloggers?
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2009/02/truth-about-cats-and-dogs-original.html

Although your work is fine and may be well meaning, but it only plays into the hands of all those blog-baiters out there who think blogs have nothing good to offer.

It would have been better for yu to explain why you were doing what you did, just saying “it is a metric doesn’t cut it.”

You know, I know and all other bloggers know how tiresome and futile the charge of ‘merely opinionating’ is.

Original Opinion and Analysis will have its merit and that’s something your ‘cute’ post doesn’t quite explain.

Look forward to reading about your next metric

By: Bryan Murley

Bryan Murley — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:57:15 +0000

Hey, that's up from 6 percent when we did a similar study in 2005. Here's a link to the PDF.

By: theorist

theorist — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:43:41 +0000

Interesting. I work very hard to not have original content. But sometimes I just can’t help it.

By: Ted Thibodeau Jr

Ted Thibodeau Jr — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Tim O’Reilly tweets this to suggest that the Top 10 is an “echo chamber”.

I don’t think that necessarily follows, but it’s not clear from the report here. Perhaps it is in your actual analysis?

How much of the posting in those Top 10 Blogs represent links *to each other*, and/or links to the same external sites, and/or similar commentary on the external events? In other words, just how much of an “echo chamber” *is* this Top 10 (or top 100, or whatever reasonably small pool)?

Also, I have to question your definition of “original reporting.” Just because something is “on the web” or even “available in a Google search” doesn’t make it visible. Plenty of “original reporting” by traditional journalists involves bringing public records — “freely available” to anyone asking for it! — to light, because they’ve thought to ask for it. Thinking to do the right Google search, or in coming years, to run the right query over the Web of Linked Data (a/k/a the Semantic Web), seems to me no less “original” if few or no others have asked the same question.

By: Kevin Dando

Kevin Dando — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:15:58 +0000

Data like this supports my puzzlement when people say “citizen journalism” doesn’t exist (or that only people working for MSM can be “journalists”.) I do wonder what the numbers would have shown if tracked over, say a year.

By: Simon

Simon — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:14:30 +0000

@Mark Drapeau

With all due respect, what do you mean, “so?”

You don’t find metrics like this interesting? Why are you writing for Mashable again?

By: jon

jon — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 03:42:03 +0000

Interesting! Have you ever read Susan Herring et. al.’s “Women and children last: the discursive construction of the blogosphere”? In it, the authors talk about how “filter blogs ” — ones that report and comment on things that happen elsewhere — are privileged over personal-experience blogs. Looks like your results are consistent with that!