When you wander round Digg and different social bookmarking websites, you’ll discover a slight discrimination in opposition to blogs (or so it seems at first look). Many blogging-related tales get buried routinely. Those that make it to the entrance web page usually obtain harsh feedback alongside the “who cares about blogs anyway” trend.
These episodes made me curious, so I made a decision to dig a little bit deeper. The query that I wished to reply was: how well-liked are blogs inside social bookmarking websites? Extra particularly: what share of “well-liked” tales are coming from blogs? The outcomes have been shocking.
The Methodology
To start with I chosen three social bookmarking websites to incorporate on the analysis: Digg, Scrumptious and Stumble Upon. The following step was to really outline what could be thought of a weblog, and what wouldn’t.
To be able to be thought of a weblog, the web site wanted to fulfill 2 out of the three standards that comply with:
- It runs on blogging-specific software program
- It has a remark part
- Its content material is structured chronologically
Clearly there have been some grey areas. Some mainstream publications, as an illustration, are beginning to undertake feedback on their web sites. Additionally they construction the content material chronologically, which means that they could possibly be thought of blogs. However they weren’t.
That stated, blogs of mainstream publications have been thought of as such. Whereas something coming from www.wired.com, was not thought of, tales coming from blogs.wired.com have been thought of to be blogs.
The precise analysis consisted of monitoring the highest tales (entrance web page tales from Digg, well-liked tales from Scrumptious and “stumbled” pages from StumbleUpon) for 10 days. All of the URLs of the counted tales have been saved.
The variety of tales counted every day is variable for the primary two social bookmarking websites (since you can’t management it) and glued for StumbleUppon (since you’ll be able to management what number of pages you “stumble” each day). Beneath you will discover the outcomes.
Digg
Surprisingly sufficient (at the least for me) Digg revealed itself to be probably the most blog-friendly social bookmarking website among the many three. All through the ten days, over 54% of the entrance web page tales got here from blogs.
This could possibly be defined by the massive variety of well-liked blogs (e.g., Gizmodo, Engadget, Lifehacker and TechCrunch) which have a readership very lively on Digg.
Alternatively, since Digg is the positioning that generates extra site visitors for featured tales, one might argue that bloggers “purpose” for Digg when creating and selling their content material.
| Day | Whole Tales | Blogs | Non-Blogs | % of Blogs | % of Non-Blogs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 44 | 17 | 27 | 38,6% | 61,4% |
| 2 | 47 | 21 | 26 | 44,7% | 55,3% |
| 3 | 52 | 32 | 20 | 61,5% | 38,5% |
| 4 | 54 | 36 | 18 | 66,7% | 33,3% |
| 5 | 45 | 21 | 24 | 46,7% | 53,3% |
| 6 | 43 | 28 | 15 | 65,1% | 34,9% |
| 7 | 44 | 24 | 20 | 54,5% | 45,5% |
| 8 | 43 | 26 | 17 | 60,5% | 39,5% |
| 9 | 48 | 23 | 25 | 47,9% | 52,1% |
| 10 | 42 | 22 | 20 | 52,4% | 47,6% |
| Common | 46,2 | 25 | 21,2 | 54,1% | 45,9% |
Scrumptious
Scrumptious was probably the most balanced website. Think about that 3 days out of 10 introduced extra tales coming from blogs. On common, 45,7% of the tales that appeared on the “Widespread” web page of the social bookmarking website have been coming from blogs.
Once more, even when this quantity shouldn’t be as massive because the Digg one, we will say that blogs characterize a corner-stone for Scrumptious customers.
| Day | Whole Tales | Blogs | Non-Blogs | % of Blogs | % of Non-Blogs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 40 | 15 | 25 | 37,5% | 62,5% |
| 2 | 34 | 16 | 18 | 47,1% | 52,9% |
| 3 | 35 | 15 | 20 | 42,9% | 57,1% |
| 4 | 39 | 25 | 14 | 64,1% | 35,9% |
| 5 | 32 | 17 | 15 | 53,1% | 46,9% |
| 6 | 43 | 14 | 29 | 32,6% | 67,4% |
| 7 | 31 | 14 | 17 | 45,2% | 54,8% |
| 8 | 31 | 12 | 19 | 38,7% | 61,3% |
| 9 | 29 | 18 | 11 | 38,9% | 61,1% |
| 10 | 36 | 14 | 22 | 38,9% | 61,1% |
| Common | 35 | 16 | 19 | 45,7% | 54,3% |
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon had sudden quantity as nicely, however in the other way as these of Digg. There was no single day the place the variety of “stumbled” pages coming from blogs surpassed the the quantity non-blog ones.
On common, 32,7% of the served pages have been coming from blogs. Possibly the outcomes are biased as a result of the truth that they’re coming from my private stumble exercise, and never from the Stumble Buzz web page. I’m engaged on the latter and can replace the outcomes shortly.
| Day | Whole Tales | Blogs | Non-Blogs | % of Blogs | % of Non-Blogs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30 | 10 | 20 | 33,3% | 66,7% |
| 2 | 30 | 9 | 21 | 30,0% | 70,0% |
| 3 | 30 | 11 | 19 | 36,7% | 63,3% |
| 4 | 30 | 6 | 24 | 20,0% | 60,0% |
| 5 | 30 | 8 | 22 | 26,7% | 74,3% |
| 6 | 30 | 8 | 22 | 26,7% | 74,3% |
| 7 | 30 | 12 | 18 | 40,0% | 60,0% |
| 8 | 30 | 11 | 19 | 36,7% | 63,3% |
| 9 | 30 | 13 | 17 | 43,3% | 56,7% |
| 10 | 30 | 10 | 20 | 33,3% | 66,7% |
| Common | 30 | 9,8 | 20,2 | 32,7% | 67,3% |
Last Concerns
Keep in mind that these outcomes may deviate from the precise recognition of blogs inside the talked about social bookmarking websites (even as a result of stated recognition adjustments over the time). I’m already engaged on extending the interval of the analysis to 30 days so as to verify the outcomes.
On common, 54,1% of Digg‘s entrance web page tales have been coming from blogs, 45,7% of Scrumptious well-liked tales have been coming from blogs and 32,7% of StumbleUpon stumbled pages have been blogs.
Whatever the peculiar traits of every social bookmarking website, the numbers have been larger than what I used to be anticipating. There are 15 million lively blogs on this planet, which is a fraction of the lively “conventional” web sites.
Maybe there’s a widespread false impression concerning the recognition of blogs. On this case, plainly the information trump opinions; blogs are extra well-liked and credible than individuals assume.
About Mark
Mark is an digital entrepreneur from New York Metropolis who lately acquired DBT. He began his ventures shopping for rising then promoting a number of companies and content material blogs on Flippa. An ideal night time for him constitutes pizza, wine, gradual jazz and WordPress! He is an website positioning knowledgeable and a progress strategist. When he is not engaged on his companies he enjoys sharing his discovered classes with the DBT group.
