The Three Caveats
(shown here during the first encore at their
legendary 1961 reunion concert)
legendary 1961 reunion concert)
Methodology:
Because I am very, very lazyFor the sake of clarity, I kept it simple: pulled a random 10-week sample (from 2006-2007) from the archives of one of the undisputed A-List heavyweights – Duncan Black of Eschaton – and just counted the links.
How often does he link and to whom?
Of the total universe of possible sources to link to (thousands? millions?), what was the actual size of the constellation of locations to which he chose to direct his reader’s attention?
And what, if anything, does the distribution of those links tell us about the truth or falsity of the myth of the Great Clique in the Sky?
Accuracy:
Although I believe my SQL-fu is adequate to the task, my Trimming Dragon and Parsing Claw techniques are far from perfect, leading no doubt to a few truncations and omissions. When I starting collecting that good George Soros money for such services, I will be able to take more time and refine my methodology. As it is, I eye-checked the data carefully enough to vouch for its overall veracity.
Rounding upward:
Affiliated people/sites have different URLs, and so one group or realm’s frequency on the dance-card may be higher than the raw numbers suggest simply because the mechanical means I used to tally the data didn’t round up all affiliates into one bucket.
So, for example, the full name of “Electioncentral” is “electioncentral.tpm.blog”, an affiliate of the TPM Federation. As is the TPM Café and TPM Muckraker. Each of these was counted separately under its own name, rather than as one entity.
Similarly “Yglesias.tpmcafe” crosses boundaries into both the Yglesiasverse and TPM. Likewise the most excellent Glenn Greenwald tracks across from his old home – “glenngreenwald.blogspot.com” – to his new place at Salon.com (which, in turn, became a much more linked-favorite site once Glenn had parked there.)
So, what were the results?
A 10-week sample taken from 2006-2007 yielded the following:
- Total number of outgoing links: 819.
- Average number of outgoing links/week: 82.
- Average number of outgoing links/day: 12.
- Total number of individual sites linked-to: 241.
- Site most often linked to: Thinkprogress.org. Linked 66 times.
- Relationship between Thinkprogress.org and Eschaton?
- As of mid-August 2007, “Atrios” has been cited, featured or linked-to by ThinkProgress 210 times (per site search engine)
- Site second most often linked to: Mediamatters.org. Linked 56 times.
- Relationship between Mediamatters.org and Eschaton?
- Eschaton proprietor Duncan Black is a Media Matters Staff/Advisor.
Fun with Percentages #1: These top two sites accounted for
- 0.83% of the overall universe of unique sites (2 out of 241)
- 15% of all outgoing links.
Fun with Percentages #2: The top six (6) sites –
Thinkprogress.org
Mediamatters.org
Prospect.org
Talkingpointsmemo (TPM)
Matthewyglesias
(The) Washingtonpost
Mediamatters.org
Prospect.org
Talkingpointsmemo (TPM)
Matthewyglesias
(The) Washingtonpost
accounted for --
- 2% of the overall universe of unique sites (6 out of 241)
- 30% of all outgoing links.
Fun with Percentages #3: The top ten (10) sites accounted for
- 4% of the overall universe of unique sites (10 out of 241)
- 39% of all outgoing links.
Fun with Percentages #4: The top 18 sites accounted for
- 7% of the overall universe of unique sites (18 out of 241)
- 50% of all outgoing links.
Fun with Percentages #5: In that Top 18, you will find six (6) traditional news organizations (NY Time, Washington Post, etc) or blogs owned-and-operated by traditional news organizations (Times Swampland) that are often merely being sourced.
So the number of what one might consider to be actual blog blogs represented in the top 50% of all outgoing links is 12, or 4% of the overall universe of unique sites.
Fun with Percentages #6: The bottom 121 sites accounted for
- 50% of the overall universe of unique sites (121 out of 241)
- 15% of all outgoing links.
So based on this sampling, how do those ingots of received wisdom from the Elders of the digital Left stack up.
#1: “A-listing is hard, hard work.”
No, its not.
Between the other dozen things I do every day, I read a lot of news…because I fell into the savage grip of reading at a young age and have never been able to pry that ink-stained monkey off my back. And based on tests conducted on my own sofa, tossing up a 15-10 word link to a story that interests me simply isn’t that hard. Be generous and call it 20 – 30 minutes per, and 12 links a day is, at most, 4-6 hours.
Granted that only puts you in a distant exurb of Xanadu, but it ain’t exactly chopping cotton either.
Also I have to believe that if I routinized the harvesting of half of my content so that I got it from the same handful of sites every day, it’d get even streamlined.
#2: Just Blog!Harder!/Write better.
No, sorry, not buying any.
Take a good look at the good Dirty Fucking Hippy writers. Other than Digby or Glenn Greenwald – who each can kick seven kinds of ass before their morning Ovaltine – the degree to which the massed might of the sparkling writers of the Left budge the link-needle certainly appears to be negligible.
#3: “The market is saturated.”
I suppose this could be the case; I don’t think in terms of markets, and have no data from which to draw definitive conclusions.
However, given the facts in evidence, isn’t this also an equally plausible explanation?
Monopsony/ monopsonist:
A market similar to a monopoly except that a large buyer not seller controls a large proportion of the market and drives the prices down. Sometimes referred to as the buyer's monopoly.
I will note without comment or judgment that the received wisdom of the Elders of the digital Left appear to be extraordinarily similar to the arguments offered by WalMart as to why it is simply value and the White Magic of the marketplace that drives customers to its doors, and not because it uses its sheer size to pick winners and losers based on its own, self-serving business model.
Sure Sam and Ella’s Farm Fresh Eggs are free to set up shop in the giant shadow cast by Sam Walton’s Mutant Child.
But to pretend that WalMart does not effectively control access to the market in that area, or that Sam and Ella’s success does not depend on how well their little dreams conform to WalMart’s Grand Strategy, is condescending and ridiculous.
So there you have it: just the facts as I found them, reported mostly without fear or favor, and overall quite an interesting little project and change of pace for me.
And now I’m going to unwind from a very long week and shoot a little pool: a game, which, assuming the table is true and the balls aren’t chiseled, you win or lose based on nothing but your prowess with the stick, and your ability to hold your liquor.
I'm sure there's a lesson for the kids in there somewhere.
22 comments:
I think some of the A-list blogs are kind of like chat rooms, personally. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's a different thing than you're going to attract with the long form posts you make. And who needs another chat room anyhow?
Castle Driftglass, perched atop Mont Ste. Driftglass. The tidal road shown comes from the Wilson Avenue Intake Crib, which occludes Castle Driftglass from the view of most Chicagoans.
We don't need no steenkin' A-list.
What whig said. Chat rheums. Pretty much closed shops, too. Not much substance, altho' they can be a bitta fun sometimes.
BTW, where is your archive on the Judas Gospel? Best I read on the subject.
Ouch. Too much math for my early morning brain. Must go back to larger chat rooms where I won't be challenged so much.
Good on ya, Drifty. There will always be a righteous place in the blogosphere for the likes of you. And we're all happy about that.
- mac
Yeah, a lot of the linkage analysis was kind of over my head--not mathematically, but substantively in terms of what it means. Is this a fair paraphrase?
"The top left-wing blogs are engaged in mutual interlocking reacharounds, while the smaller blogs are just left to whack off alone in the basement."
Another question, in relation to "markets". I know you said you don't think of things in those terms, but I guess at the end of the day this must come down to the moolah. What order of magnitude of moolah are we talking about here?
Are the people who own Salon becoming millionaires, billionaires? Does Kos have a private jet? I'm just looking for a rough sense of magnitude.
I believe in any developed medium there is necessarily an A list made up largely of people or organizations that found a new opportunity and exploited it well enough first.
The key is "well enough." I use Eschaton as a news reader for certain subjects. For those certain subjects I am guaranteed that some link will be posted by Atrios. Is Eschaton the best news reader for those subjects? No, probably not, but it's good enough. Reader laziness -- my own -- has me coming back to Eschaton daily. (OTOH I never read comments on Eschaton any more. At one point they had something to teach me about the evolving political situation in the USA -- I'm Canadian -- but now they have little for me. I have no buddies i that chat room.)
Similarly I scan Daily Kos' front page for substantial news and analysis but seldom look at diaries and even less often at comments.
I believe that many people latched on to their favorite A list blogs in about 2004 when they were desperate for real news and a sense that they weren't alone in their opposition to Bush and the War. I bet that most of the activity, reading, writing substantial pieces, or making comments, goes back to people who chose their trusted internet sources then and will stick with them for a long time. This advantage will keep the A list healthy for a long time, especially those that provide links to real-world activities, like DKos, and not just a forum for discussion and a trusted blogger in charge.
However, this won't last forever. A new issue or set of concerns will emerge at some point, the current anti-Bush, anti-war A list will not meet the needs of those (younger) people for whom the new issues are paramount, and a set of Young Turks will create new forums that will become the energetic monopsonist A list of a new group or as people say so sloppily "generation."
IOW: no matter how often you tell them, your kids will never believe that the music you loved when you were 18 is the turning point of all musical history.
PS and no matter how often they tell you that your old music stinks, you won't believe them.
Drifty honey I'll be happy to pour you a Blue Moon beer with Mineola wedge, compose ya a nice thick beef sammich, and I've got full jar of Devon English Cream for yer pie afterwards.
But first I get to lick your brain.
If I may offer a rebuttal on behalf of a clique to which I don't belong...
1. It's kind of cheating to debate "the received wisdom of the Elders of the digital Left" rather than the specific words anyone has said. If I could paraphrase your argument to my tastes before starting, rest assured that as brilliant as you are, I could kick your ass on any topic -- and it would prove nothing.
2. As a specific example of the above, when I've read high-traffic bloggers opining about what creates high traffic, they've emphasized not brilliant writing so much as lots of output. In fact, thanks to a quick Google search, here's Atrios: "People click on a website regularly when they expect it to have new content. If you're a thoughtful writer who tends to write longer essays then you're at a disadvantage."
In that same post, he recommends that bloggers wanting more attention "need to get some mad blogwhoring skills." Which seems rather different than saying they shouldn't bother trying.
3. You're right, though, he does tend to link to a rather limited universe of blogs. But then, so do you. And the dirty, nefarious truth in both cases is probably the same: You link to blogs that you read and like.
Folks seem to forget that Markos, Duncan, and the rest didn't run for office as Representatives of the Blogosphere on a platform of linking to a broad and demographically representative sample of all liberal blogs everywhere -- they're just individual, idiosyncratic people who started blogs that happened to become popular. So if they get snippy when they're told it's their "duty" to do X and Y and link to Z, Q, and R, there's a good reason for it.
The basic thing that folks seem to be mad about is that -- like most of the rest of us -- Duncan et al. don't read as many sites as they did when they first discovered blogging, having settled on a handful that they find consistently interesting or useful. Except that it makes Duncan a hypocrite, whereas for the rest of us it's just natural evolution.
Atrios sometimes has something to say and sometimes something worth saying. His commenters on the other hand............ I wonder if he despairs of the chatroom he's created? WWIII could be declared and they'd be backslapping and high-fiving as normal. Frist.
Sam and Ella's Farm Fresh Eggs - that just about killed, me. No, wait.. I meant.... well - you know.
Still, I'd take them anyday over the Great Walmart of China.
Quiche Lorraine, or Laure's Souffle . .
One must read what one has time for . .
Drifry is one of THIS Larue's stops, and thanks hoss, for bringing me on board.
That Dunk and others of the Atrios and FDL legions are even READING, much less posting to, yer shit, is an honer.
Drifty is teh hoss . . . still.
Course, Group News Blog is my #2 . . . . *G*
Drift- another fantastic post...and you know I love your writing, as writing, and not connected to any big conglomerate, but also your commentary. its a lucky thing indeed that some of us can afford somehow to keep on keeping on.
I've been looking into this topic myself since Kos because of the cult of personality thing that goes on, and how strange and funny I found it. It's less strange and funny to people who need or want to make a living at this, or even who just believe that they should be able to glean a little of the crumbs from the big sites.
I really hadnt ever paid attention to what goes on behind the scenes because Im afraid that if I ever focused too much on this stuff I would just stop writing altogether...or at least stop publishing. Maybe Im just clinging to some sort of childish dream of purity or something, but Ive been pretty successful, in my busy mom-life thing, at not falling into that hole of scratching at the glass ceiling for approval or admittance. I'm too busy in life and my own mind to keep up anyway.
I think that you're right that the big blogs link to only certain blogs and each other and certain lower tier sites in some lockstep...and also they do the same with mainstream media over and over...and then they have some moments of pure reporting (like the libby trial and Ned Lamont at FDL,) and even some writing and great commentary. Its probably human nature to make a clique and cling to it. I also don't think that this comes from just the blogs that "they like and read" as is noted above.
What Ive seen, and what troubles me is that a group of upstart citizens did what citizens of America do, which is to pitch a revolution against the M$M not reporting what was going on. Then they continued on to somewhat become media conglomerates themselves...
The career trajectory is the same in any of these mediums really, you get "famous" and you get ads, you get rich, you have an infrastructure to support, you branch out to books and TV/radio appearances...etc...
There is nothing wrong with this except for what is missing here.
Something goes on in human nature that makes the revolutionaries become the establishment and forget what they were fighting against.
I don't like chat rooms either...nor do I like the all too often "open thread...have fun"
Nor do I think that a guy who maybe got famous for posting video in pre-youtube days is necessarily a great writer. Nor is a great writer able to necessarily do the tech stuff that made this all possible...
But thats the rub here;
I like to read blogs where the writers, group or singular, are actual writers with real ideas. I also remember the days of the established Lou Grants of the editorial world reaching down and giving a hand up to new unfolding writers.
There is no future to this format if that doesn't happen.
Commentary and insight are individual talents, and there is, in places out there, a dearth of talent, and an overabundance of the cult and the 15 minutes of fame stretched out way too long for serial chatty commenter's.
I'm not saying that I mind that, but I do view many of the big sites as chat rooms these days and I usually don't look much unless I am linked there for a specific purpose by a blog that I read or have found.
In my travels on the internets, I often have felt that I have reached the end...the absolute end of surfing... if I followed the big sites and their suggestions.
I get further by looking up the blogs of comenters on small sites who strike me, and then go through their links. The blogrolls on big sites are more a convenience to me to get the hell out...and I find that I go very eclectic from there.
The question for us is what can we expect of the big blogs? Do they have a responsibility to not only find new writers, but to allow new writers in a little? I think they do...and I also think that its a long tradition in writing and that anyone who writes who doesn't give a hand up is doing themselves and the medium a disservice...anyone who is threatened by upcoming talent is a little too concerned with their own press and numbers, and keeping the power centralized...and thats a red flag for me.
and isnt that what this whole thing was against in the first place anyway?
I gotta hand it Markos for stepping down in the name department of the YK, but how diverse is the Netroots Nation really? As the power disperses, if it disperses at all, does it go much past his immediate court?
Keep writing Drift...I rely on your commentary in this crazy world and I know alot of others do too.
My feeling about my little tiny corner of the world is that the numbers don't count...and there aren't many...I'm always more interested in WHO they were, which is just curiosity...and since I have little time to do this stuff the way I would or might as time goes on, I'm just as happy to have my little familiar hits.
The surge from links is great fun, but for me it has to be because someone actually read my stuff and linked to it mindfully.
Reading blogs and linking to what is really good out there is ime consuming...but its also a responsibility that becomes more and more relevant as your voice grows...
Long format rules!!
xoxoxo
Melina, excellent comments.
Drifty - I KNOW that your situation burns you up. It is a fact that you are a much better writer than 99% of the other blogs out there, regardless of their traffic or lack of such. When you are firing on all cylinders, you are on a par with HST and Unca Harlan.
But the name of the blog game is definitely "Post, and post often". There are definitely advantages in teaming up with like-minded others to spread the posting load -- I think that a lot of people see that you don't update multiple times a day, and quit coming. It is their loss.
That being said, I really think if you found a couple of other good writers and teamed up ALA the Group News Blog while keeping a firm but kind editorial hand (I doubt you'd take kindly to hundreds of posts on the Tour de France), you'd find your traffic steadily increasing and you'd do nothing but benefit.
Just a thought. But please keep on keeping on. With Steve gone, your voice is more needed now than ever.
"That being said, I really think if you found a couple of other good writers and teamed up ALA the Group News Blog while keeping a firm but kind editorial hand (I doubt you'd take kindly to hundreds of posts on the Tour de France), you'd find your traffic steadily increasing and you'd do nothing but benefit."
This is, undoubtedly, true. But it makes blogging "work", and I get the impression that this is not the kind of "work" that DG is interested in taking on.
Thanks.
Can't let Swopa's points go unanswered.
First, I like Swopa's stuff on Iraq a lot (also I enjoy the caption contests).
But I think Swopa fundamentally misses Drifty's point (and perhaps his response is even a manifestation of it -- Swopa is a bit coy when suggesting he's not up there in the blogosphere pantheon -- Needlenose is at least a B+ or A- blog).
Swopa's point 1 is nowhere near a fair summary of Drifty's argument
"If I could paraphrase your argument to my tastes before starting, rest assured that as brilliant as you are, I could kick your ass on any topic -- and it would prove nothing."
Drifty doesn't say anything like this, he's discussing the evolution of the left blogosphere.
My understanding of Drifty's argument is that he sees the development of a self reinforcing clique at the top of the blogosphere (perhaps not as bad as the echo chamber of the MSM -- but something with the potential to move that direction -- DG is pointing out the irony of the lib blogosphere -- that appeared in reaction to the MSM echo chamber -- becoming similar to it).
Swopa's second point is about what Atrios says; what Drifty is concerned with (as I understand it) is what Atrios does.
Contra Swopa's final point, it's not just that Duncan, Markos and co. just happen to have idiosyncratic favorites that they link to -- but that their favorites are the other A-listers and this creates a self-reinforcing network.
So Swopa's claim that all that's really happening is a little hypocrisy on the part of A-listers misses the evolution that Drifty is suggesting might be taking place.
Swopa doesn't address the main argument.
Aside from Drift's pellucid per-september assessment of the blogosphere and what it's up to, isn't that Lambert Hendricks $ Ross?
Probably the three most incredibly imaginative people ever to weave the human voice into a tapestry that is still off the scale.
Needlenose is at least a B+ or A- blog).
Ahh, if only. What's your definition of a B+/A- blog, traffic-wise?
...it's not just that Duncan, Markos and co. just happen to have idiosyncratic favorites that they link to -- but that their favorites are the other A-listers and this creates a self-reinforcing network.
Well, that's somewhat circular, since the best way to become an A-lister is to have Atrios et al. link to you repeatedly.
I acknowledged that the top sites link to a small universe of blogs, but I find it hard to criticize them when I only read 5-6 blogs a day myself. When I have some free time and feeling like stretching out, that grows to 12-15.
If someone told me it was my duty to check the top 241 blogs regularly and link to them in a healthy distribution, my response would be unprintable in a family newspaper, as I suspect yours or Drifty's would be. So while I would love it if Atrios linked to me more often, I'm not about to pretend he's part of an evil, self-protecting cabal because he doesn't.
This is the first discussion on the subject that hasn't degenerated into recrimination, namecalling, "poor-me"-ism, and accusations of selling out.
Congratulations, all, especially you, driftglass, for the first rancor-free, fact-based deconstruction of the situation.
And the other comments her serve to add further value to drifty's observations.
I think that both drifty and swopa can agree that what really matters first in blogging, like all basically creative endeavors, is that you love doing it.
When that is true, the other stuff doesn't seem to matter as much, including whether you win any popularity contests or get the coveted blogroll link from Kos or Atrios. (I've actually stopped reading a few of my formerly favorite blogs because of their proprietors' incessant, childish whining on the subject.)
The rise in the importance and influence of local blogging will serve, IMHO, to make a lot of these A-listers vs. long-tailers firestorms moot, because of the new opportunities local blogging will create to influence events and promote activism.
>Needlenose is at least a B+ or A- >blog).
Ahh, if only. What's your definition of a B+/A- blog, traffic-wise?
No specific metric, B+/A- for me means a blog I read -- it's part of my daily round.
Hits, body bags and such are one measure. Sure, I hit Duncans place every coupla days or so and breeze through all his "Heh, Indeedy" pointed punditry, mainly to catch-up on the links and news. It is a snack.
But when I want a meal of philosophy and soul-searing gyroscopic true-northism, mixed with cognac and fart jokes, I come to castle Driftglass. The stunning panaramic vistas and startlingly brutal close-up mental images conjured by your wordsmithing is simply unequalled to my finding.
When I want some companionship on the long and lonely roads I travel, I cool my feet in the lake.
It is about mood, for me in short. To calculate such a thing as A-list is tough, Drifty, merely because time spent at a sight in gaping admiration without comment is not a metric being measured.
And in no fashion, arena, topic or literary attempt is Swopa fit to carry your battery pack.
OFG
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