Blog Network Watch

11/22 Remainders

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Weblobs, Inc. has an interview posted with Ryan Block, Managing Editor of Engadget.

Ads on Blogs says that Ads on Blogs are growing up.

Metroblogging has launched Metroblogging Vancouver

Apparently, press releases are a reliable way of blog promotion.

Performancing takes a look at blog stats software. And maybe I’m old school here, but I’ve been using Webalizer for what seems like forever. And amazingly, it still works. All praise webalizer.

I must confess, we do use Mint over at BloggerJobs. And ya know, it’s cool and sexy, but Webalizer still really fulfills my needs. Plus Webalizer can track the whole network. So again, all praise webalizer.

Peter Rojas is apparently ending comments over at Engadget.

Tonight’s posts powered by Talisker

Originally posted on November 22, 2005 @ 11:43 pm

What’s a blog network, anyways?

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Not Too Geeky has a great post up that goes into much more detail about some of the questions we were asking yesterday about blog network metrics:

There is a lot of talk about blogging networks. Blog Network Watch has an article inquiring how we “measure, rank, track and rate blog networks?”

Very good question but impossible to answer until it is determined exactly what a blog is. Second warning…it’s about to get ugly…

I do not think blog networks that have only one domain are blog networks – they are web sites with proper navigation, dividing the content into manageable areas.
Now before the hair rises on your head and tell me difference between Corante, which is considered a blog network and RPG Planet, which is not? RPG Plant has many subsites under their domain (the big ones are split off on their own), they allow comments, they are using blog type software. Oh I know what it could be…RPG Planet has sister sites like 3D ActionPlanet, and are part of GamesSpy, which is owned by IGN, which makes IGN own one huge blog network. If the subdomain sites were scrapped IGN would still qualify as a blog network that has more reach and community interaction than any other network…yet they are never listed on any of the blog network lists. Why?

Good questions all – and some good discussion in the comments at Not Too Geeky

What’s a blog network, anyways?

Originally posted on November 21, 2005 @ 11:58 pm

Excess Bloggage

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Nick Denton asks when Weblogs, Inc. might shed some of their excess bloggage:

Oh, by the way, while we’re on the subject of site closures, here’s a question: when will Jason Calacanis put some of his 50 defunct WIN titles out of their misery?

Nick is referring, of course, to this analysis of the Weblogs, Inc. network completed by Scott Kidder earlier this year that shows that many of the Weblogs, Inc. weblogs aren’t being maintained.

Blogebrity also covered this back in October.

Calacanis responds in this post:

Why close them? They can sit there and get traffic, make Adsense revenue, and serve as a resource for folks. I think the model is to leave these sites up… I don’t see the point in taking them down. If I was you Nick I would leave OddJack up and let it make you some cash and leave the posts up for folks who might be interested.

I agree with Jason Calacanis on this. The content is there, it’s getting traffic, even if it’s not the traffic one might have intended. It will still make money. God knows, I make more on my personal blog’s archives than I do on any of its regularly updated pages.

Originally posted on November 22, 2005 @ 10:15 pm

wurk.net launches two new sites

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wurk.net has launched two new sites:

We’ve just added tv.wurk.net which covers jobs, careers and working in tv land, and also weird.wurk.net which takes a voyeuristic look at the world’s weirdest jobs, and other strange stuff.

That brings us to 10 live blogs, with another couple due due to pop up before the weekend.

Originally posted on November 24, 2005 @ 4:13 pm

Blog Network Metrics

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There are now nearly 100 blogging networks out there in the blogosphere totalling just over 1,000 individual blogs.

Some are simple 3-4 site networks like our own with our 5 blogs or wurk.net with its 7 blogs. Some are massive networks like Weblogs, Inc. with its 82 blogs, or Open Source Media with its 88 blogs, or 9rules with their 85 blogs (as of a few days ago)

Does this make Open Source Media the largest blog network?

Do the number of blogs matter? Some small networks (by the number of blogs anyways) like Gawker Media with its 14 blogs have massive traffic. Gawker Media, for example, has an average Alexa Rank across their 14 sites of 31,018 and more than 84,000 links from 28,263 separate blogs link to Gawker sites. Compare that to Creative Weblogging with their more than 40 sites who has an average Alexa Rank of over 1,000,000.

Does this make Gawker Media a larger network than Open Source Media?

Some blog networks are hosted under a single domain name. Corante, for example, hosts more than 27 individual blogs under their Corante.com domain. Yet each have individual authors, or multiple authors in some cases, and blog about individual topics. Corante, for comparison, has an Alexa Rank of 37,361 with 14,130 inbound links from 4,989 separate sites.

Some blog networks have publicly released their statistics such as Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jason Calcanis of Weblogs, Inc. Most do not.

Do the business models come into play? Many networks such as b5media, Gawker, and Weblogs, Inc. own their content and employ or contract to write for their blogs. Other networks, such as 9rules and Open Source Media are more of a loose association of blog authors united by community or advertising.

So how does one measure, rank, track, and rate the blog networks?

That’s the question that we’re going to attempt to answer in the new version of BlogNetworkList, now approaching its beta phase.

That said — here’s the question for all of our readers?

How does one measure a blog network? What statistics are really most valuable?

What would you want to see in such a tool?

Let us know in the comments.

Data courtesy of Alexa and Technorati. Used with permission through their respective developer networks.

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Originally posted on November 20, 2005 @ 11:59 pm