Popularity: How do You measure it?
Published August 13, 2006
While Top100 rates people on the number of votes they receive or the number of users visiting Top100 from the blog (which in my opinion is an highly inaccurate method of rating), the other three rate the blogs solely on the basis of unique visitors (i.e. traffic) which is how it should be.
Feed Subscriptions
A good way of ascertaining popularity is by looking at the number of feed subscriptions. e.g. Feedburner gives you buttons that let you display the number of subscribers to your feed. This, however can't be a sure-shot method because you may have a lot of subscribers but no readers. Yet again, this doesn't track the actual traffic that the site receives. Additionally, it only tracks those who have signed up for the service and put the code on their site.
No. of Comments
Visitor interactivity in terms of number of comments that the posts receive is another way to find out how popular a blog is. This can also be further used to determining visitor loyalty to understand how many repeat commenters are present. And yet again, this isn't the best way, because you could have a lot of visitors who love reading your blog but would not want to comment on it.
To conclude there are several ways to determine blog popularity. However, all of these methods may not give the same results. So which method should we actually adopt?
Give me your opinion.
Which method would you use from the above?
Do you have still another way of measuring blog popularity?
Or have do you believe that since your blog is personal, you don't really care about how popular it is?
And just a note to us Indian bloggers. Let's quit the squabble about who is No. 1 in the Indian blogosphere and look beyond. There is a whole world of bloggers out there.
- Popularity: How do You measure it?
- Published: August 13, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Blogging, Sci/Tech: Computers, Sci/Tech: Internet
- Writer: Ajay
- Ajay's BC Writer page
- Ajay's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
I hope not by me, Jet. I'm in no position whatsoever to chastise. I am but a mere slug, and happily so, I might add.
Very true about how you put it Snarkattack. Personal appreciation does help a lot in satisfying our ego at times :)
Ajay,
I came across your article here via Google Alerts.
Personally, I don't blog. Most anyone I know doesn't blog. Haven't found much use for blogs, today. The 2005 Blog Awards showcased a few blogs of which most were fairly useless. I think one young lady blogged about her wart on her thumb.
I guess you guys think that that's measurement of popularity? Warts? She won an award!
In the history of blogging, I'd say the MOST POPULAR and MOST FAMOUS is Leonardo da Vinci. He blogged some 5,000 journals (that we know of). Allowed comments on them and never once permitted spam (does yours?).
I can understand keeping a journal such as Leonardo's. It's useful. You can read a virtual copy of one of them on the British Library's web site. It's cool. It's flash. It's interactive.
It's an excellent contribution. His works have been savored for centuries. Very popular!
I believe that there are some 80 million blogs (and growing) today. None of them are popular in my world regardless of any of the means of measurement that you mentioned in your article.
I don't think any one of these 80 million will last forever as Leonardo's will. I don't think any one of them will hit the UK Library of fine literary journal (blog) content as is Leonardo's, Michaelangelo's and several others.
Therefore, one VALID means of measurement (of popularity) amongst the blogging community is having your blog accepted and archived by the British Library of Fine Literary Journals.
Kind regards,
Al Toman
This is some of the points I wanted to raise Al Toman.
Like I said, no scale to date has been able to judge popularity of any blog.
As you mentioned, most people do not agree with the so called Blog Awards, just as many don't agree with the Oscars.
And one point I agree with, if persons like Leonardo or Aristotle for that matter blog, all our blogs would pale in comparison :)
You can also measure the amount of people currently on each page of your site. This gives current popularity per page, which is a unique statistic useful in news sites, blogs and shopping sites.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/51484)
I'd like to say that I don't care how popular my blog is, but that wouldn't be honest at all.
I think it might be more accurate, however, to say that those whose opinions I value - if they read and mention it to me in personal correspondence - that means a lot to me.
That isn't to say that I expect everyone I know to read what I write just because they know me, but it sure does brightens one's day when someone you consider to be intelligent tells you that your post on X was well-written, entertaining or generally enjoyable.
Probably a very long-winded way of saying that personal satisfaction is more important to me than popularity as defined by the amount of traffic one gets.