Bloggasm

Up until relatively recently, the best way to measure a blogger’s online influence/power was to count the number of inbound links from other blogs. But because of the rise of different kinds of social media, it’s no longer so simple. Most bloggers don’t just blog, they write on online message boards, they use facebook, myspace, twitter. They upload pictures on flickr, etc… Given all these other platforms, then a person can have a much more influential presence.

For instance, did you know that I have a livejournal account? Did you know that I have a facebook? How about my myspace profile? This doesn’t even count the comment fields of other blogs I opine in, the message boards I frequent, my photobucket uploads. Or the fact that I’m a newspaper journalist by day.

So anyway, Sixty Second View has come up with a metric that can measure a blogger’s influence much more accurately by taking all these factors into account. Check it out.

UPDATE: You know what? I just realized something. The metrics don’t take into account friends and buddies on instant messenger accounts. Or email contacts. How many times a day do you follow news links in emails or IMs? So, given that, let me mention that my google talk sn is SimonOwens@gmail.com and my AIM sn is nomissnewo

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Related posts:
1. I’m a celebrity!
2. Why is the Litblog Co-op completely ignored by several major search engines?
3. The Million Writers Award: raising the profile of online literary journals
4. Myspace and Livejournal hacked?
5. The Google-fication of Facebook

1. I always had this hope that the internet age would make the population more informed. Because of Google and Wikipedia, people would stumble upon all kinds of information unintentionally when searching for celebrity photos. Unfortunately, a new survey shows that people know even less about current events than they did before the internet became popular.

2. Before I read this article by Clive Thompson, I didn’t really understand the point of Twitter. But he actually makes sense in his argument for why it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s not just for hipster narcissists after all.

3. After Facebook opened the floodgates, its original user base became horrified and now they’re restricting access to their profiles.

There has been speculation recently that a study showing that Facebook pageviews actually declined in the past month (even though unique visitors have increased) somehow shows that Facebook won’t be able to overtake Myspace. In reality, the very fact that there were fewer pageviews is evidence that Facebook is better than Myspace.

That’s because Facebook is much more efficient. For every basic action, whether it’s checking someone’s profile or logging out of your account, it normally takes two different pages at Mypace for every page view at Facebook. For instance, if you log out of your account at Myspace, it takes you to an advertisement where you have to click “return to site” if you want to log in again. There’s two page views while for Facebook you only have one page view for the same exact action.

Facebook also has a convenient news feed so you don’t have to visit every individual friend profile to keep up with what’s going on in a person’s life. They have far fewer error messages as well. Plus they load more quickly and you don’t have to keep clicking “refresh” every five seconds to try to boot the page into submission.

The rise of unique visitors should be more indicative of success, and in that arena, Facebook is doing well.

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Related posts:
1. When viral advertising backfires: People don’t like being duped
2. The Google-fication of Facebook

Jeff Jarvis, media expert of buzzmachine fame, made a recent television appearance where he talked about facebook. You can find the video over here

Anyone who has a Facebook and checks it regularly has probably noticed that they’ve begun to offer a ton of new features. There’s everything from a classifieds section to a movies rating section to a “super poke” function.

Nick Denton wishes facebook would go back to the days when it was a nice clean interface. I agree in some aspects. I’ve come to like some of the new features. The news feed has grown on me. I use the Movies rating system. But I think it’s a bit too much.

One of the commenters at the above link labeled this as the “MySpace-ification” of Facebook. I disagree. I think it’s much more similar to Google’s previous policy of throwing a bunch of shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. A few years ago, Google was turning out beta versions of new stuff left and right, many of which were still imperfect and didn’t catch on. I’ve noticed when using some of the new facebook features that I’ll often get error messages (that’s one similarity to Myspace, for sure). Mark Zuckerberg has gone feature-happy and launches new programs before they’re even finished.