Comments (10 Responses so far)

1. September 16th, 2006 at 4:29 pm

   Sid Yadav

   Way back in January I made a similar, actually almost the same list and raised the same issue.

   http://www.rev2.org/2006/01/18/tech-vs-politics-in-the-bosphere/

   It’s interesting to see how some things have changed since then, yet many things haven’t.

2. September 16th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

   Eric

   Well, as you point out, Technorati’s sampling is biased, first by only considering inbound links and secondly because Technorati’s audience isn’t representative. How many readers of that Gardening blog would even know Technorati exists?

   Although I’d also point out that your comparison is a little apple and oranges. “Tech/Geek” is a broad category whereas “Gardening” is a relatively specific topic.

3. September 16th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

   reality check

   most people don’t have blogs. they might read them, but they don’t know what RSS stands for, they’re not interested in incoming links and they never create content. bloggers live in a state of delusion where they think everybody is blogging or is about to start blogging. blogging is not mainstream. go out in the streets in a major capital and ask 20 people if they have a blog. they don’t. most won’t even know what one is (beyond “it’s a type of website”). their home page won’t be customised, they won’t be able to define “open source”, they won’t be able to name a newsreader.

   while you may be able to demonstrate an example of a gardening blog, they’re the exception rather than the rule.

   so the reason that all the top sites in technorati are about tech stuff is because, in nearly all cases, ONLY TECH PEOPLE CREATE BLOGS. You’re just a very important ground-breaking niche, and it hasn’t really broken into the mainstream yet. I wish it had, but it hasn’t.

4. September 16th, 2006 at 5:27 pm

   Bob Morris

   Hmm, I have a political blog,(antiwar) a tech blog AND a gardening blog, so maybe that makes me uniquely qualified to comment (or not…)

   That tech blogs are at the top is no surprise, the Net is run by techies, and we all have lots of geeky stuff to discuss.

   Political blogs - a few years ago, right-of-center blogs were at the top, now it’s almost all left-of-center blogs, an interesting shift. Since politicos have something to say and want to recruit, the Net is a natural place to do it. Plus the country is becoming increasingly polarized politically, and that adds to the interest.

   While those top blogs generate big traffic and can have major influence, sometimes the smaller ones can too, like the ones with a more niche audience read and blogged by early adopters and decision influencers - this could be a Linux or an antiwar blog - who reads it can be as important as how many read it.

   I can think of several antiwar blogs with relatively few readers that are highly influential. I’m sure we can all think of blogs like that, regardless of the topic.

5. September 17th, 2006 at 12:14 pm

   Danny Kim

   The #2 blog on the list, which is in Chinese, is a blog run by a female Chinese celebrtiy. (I’m not sure if she’s a singer or a movie actress.) Anyhow, we can see how different parts of the world might have different types of blogosphere.

   It’s actually the same in Korea. It’s so much easier to find blogs or Cyworld minihompies about travelling, fashion, celebrities, health, personal finance, or gossip than those about tech, politics, business, or media.

   The main difference is that in the West, I think, the blogosphere was first widely captured by many political and tech bloggers. Since those were the early ones, Technorati might’ve built its system on top of the then-famous blogs or relatively new blogs in the then-famous categories, namely politics and tech. On the other hand, in Asia, the blogosphere first swept through the younger generation and the older expert generation people really never bothered to go on to become hardcore bloggers.

   Also, I think Technorati, like in its name, reflects the blogosphere only partially. And the partial picture could be very biased towards the categories you mentioned above. If you consider many MySpace or Xanga pages as blogs (I believe they don’t come with RSS feed support), you’ll notice right away that the fun-centered and lighter social blogosphere indeed is huge and might not have been reflected in the blogosphere portrayed by Technorati. As we’ve heard before, that so many people read/write blogs, but they don’t even know they’re blogs.

6. September 18th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

   Video Girls, Angry Guys And Cats (The Monday Remix) « chartreuse (BETA)

   […] Technorati’s sample bias […]

7. September 19th, 2006 at 8:49 am

   Dan Blank

   This seems to fit well into the “long tail” model. (sorry to use this term!) Tech and politics are unique in the benefit of blogs. There may be thousands of gardening blogs. One of them is probably a gardening blogger celebrity - the blogger that all other blogging gardeners aspire to be. But that is a bit further down the tail. Wouldn’t you find it odd if the gardening blog ranked 16th?

8. September 19th, 2006 at 7:07 pm

   engtech

   How many people do you know who read blogs regularly who aren’t interested in tech/politics?

   How many people do you know who have a blog they can link to other blogs and aren’t interested in tech/politics?

   Technorati is all about links. If you write content that other people link to you will go far. If your audience doesn’t have a blog of their own then they can’t link to you — you are doomed to be at the bottom rung of the technorati ladder.

9. September 22nd, 2006 at 1:14 pm

   Creeque

   Publishing2.0を見てたら、『なんでTechnoratiのランキングはTECH/GEEKかPOLITICSで占められてるんだべ？』というエントリでTechnoratiのランキングが出てるんですけど、やはり過去の大統領選でブログの影響力が認識されたように、政治に関連するブログは（もちろん、すべてではないけど）アクセス数も多いん

10. January 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    Dan Blystone

    I’d like to see some more financial/stock market blogs in the top 100!