Not all blogs matter. Part II

Posted Sunday, June 3, 2007 at 12:37pm in Blogging, PR General  | 

A few weeks ago I made a post being a little bit sceptical about the increase of size of the blogosphere. Well, not so much sceptical, but more cautioning myself to stay clear on the blog hype bandwagon. Comments by Technorati CEO, Dave Sifry, said that although Technorati is tracking over 70 million blogs, only 15.5 million of these have been updated in the last 90 days. So, in effect, blogging’s not for everyone and the remaining 50+ million that haven’t been updated don’t matter… To anyone really.

Something else occurred to me to today though. Remember when Technorati began tracking not just regular blogs (i.e. your WordPress, TypePad, Blogger blogs etc.) but MySpace blogs too? Have you read any MySpace blogs lately?

The ones I’ve read are quite mundane, don’t really have substance and aren’t influential whatsoever. They’re just ramblings more than anything else. Now, I don’t know how many people actually write blogs on their MySpace profile but I suspect the number is considerable. MySpace has something like 120 million members but, again, this number itself is open for criticism since no one knows how many MySpace profiles have been abandoned since the social networking site began.

Another point to note is that MySpace blogs tend not to use hyperlinks - meaning their visibility in search engines is low. So a search in Google using, for example, a brand name would generally not pull any content up from a MySpace blog on the first page. Or second for that matter. You’d probably have to dig down five pages of search results to find anything from the site – a kind of deep search the majority of people don’t do.

I’m not saying MySpacers aren’t discussing brands. On the contrary, they are and I’ve read a lot of them. But the only way you’d be able to find the ones that are were if you use a blog search engine like BlogPulse or Technorati. Both of which only track posts for a six month period I believe. Then they’re lost into the ether, never to be seen again (if they were ever seen in the first place!)

In brief

* Technorati is tracking 15.5 million blogs

* Included in this number is MySpace profile blogs

* MySpace blogs tend to be just ramblings (no deep thought, no influence etc)

* MySpace blogs have poor SEO (no inbound links) and are generally un-findable in search engines

* MySpace blogs can be found in a blog search engine but only for a six months period

So to get a fair representation of the blogs that matter from a brand, PR and reputation point of view, Technorati would have to release the number of MySpace blogs they’re tracking which should then be subtracted from the 15.5 million active blogs it’s currently tracking. I’m sure the blog search engine will have the numbers to hand but very much doubt they will release them anytime soon.

My point in a nutshell:

15.5m blogs – no. of MySpace blogs = no. of blogs that matter.

Don’t get me wrong, the number of blogs that **do** matter is still huge. We’re still talking millions here! As a total ‘off the top of my head’ guesstimation I’ll say about five million. And to reiterate from my last post: brands should be actively monitoring what’s been said online as some blogs (and other forms of online media) are important.

However, as Chuck D from 80s hip hop group, Public Enemy, once said: “Don’t believe the hype”.

Related Posts

• TWL is back. So are the Flackenhacks (maybe) 06.09.
• UK internet users increasingly heart blogs 06.10.
• "Only graduates from a top university need apply" 10.20.
• World Public Relations Festival 06.25.
• Information overload in the Knowledge Economy 06.16.

• Next post: « Facebook brings tagging to the masses
• Previous post: Yoosk »