Blogging Buzz
Everyday, I go through my bookmarked blogs. I know. Before you even say it, I know RSS is the way to go. I guess you can call me old-fashioned because I don’t mind actually visiting a site to read the latest posts. Some may find it unbearably slow or even anachronistic, but I enjoy my daily slog through my bookmarks. Some were sites I used for fodder when I worked on Yahoo! Picks, others wound up on my list through research for buzz topics, and still others ended up in my bookmarks through pure serendipity.
When you think about blogs, search may not be the first thing that comes to mind. I find most blogs end up staring back at me from the browser window thanks to links from other blogs. But people search for blogs on a variety of subjects — in the past week, we’ve seen over 3,000 different search terms with the word “blog” in them — everything from “Dream Blog” to the more philosophical “What does blog mean?”
Tools that help a person establish a blog presence on the Internet are insanely popular in search. Xanga and LiveJournal are the top two spots for those looking to start a blog. Both of these services are firmly ensconced in our top 500 search terms. Blogging seems to have replaced the old “Dear Diary…” among teenagers and these two destinations are the hottest places for teens looking to work through adolescent angst.
Here’s how they measure up in searches over the past 60 days:
Xanga’s on top, but LiveJournal runs a close second. What’s interesting to note is the spikes that occur every weekend as people jump on the blog bandwagon in their spare time.
Although I’m loathe to give up my trusty bookmarks, someday I’ll see the light. I swear. Beyond me switching to an RSS reader, I’d love to know what trends you see taking place in the blogosphere over the next few months.
Erik Gunther
Yahoo! Buzz Index Editor
Blogs are already breaking news way ahead of traditional media. With this in mind, more advertisers will add blogs to their list of ad mediums. Ads are also starting to show up in RSS feeds, so maybe we’ll all switch back to our trusty bookmarks!
Huh?
Why would people searching for blogs be any indication of their use? The appeal of blogs is that the authors have done all the linking already, you never have to go near a search engine. In fact, the thing that folks usually complain about is that blogs are so link heavy that they “pollute” search results.
I can see blog authors using search engines Very heavily as they do research for an article, or maybe folks who just read an article in last Sunday’s Parade magazine, but I’m also willing to bet that most folks who go to blogs don’t think of them as blogs, they think of them as Dave Barry, BoingBoing, Instapundit or whatever else.
For that matter, blog savvy folks usually use services that were specifically built for blogs, like Technorati and feedster to find discussion topics since they have faster updates than traditional search engines (as in less than an hour).
My guess is that the weekend punch is probably folks looking for teenage boy band blogs to poke fun at on slashdot.
“Tools that help a person establish a blog presence on the Internet are insanely popular in search. Xanga and LiveJournal are the top two spots for those looking to start a blog.”
really? i’d like to see some stats from Blogger.com and Typepad.com, please :) dude, you just gotta to try RSS -> http://www.bloglines.com
Yahoo!Searchblog rocks!
~c
Is it time to draw a distinction between the typical pointless teenie blogs as often found on Xanga and co and the more thoughtful blogs that tend to be on Typepad?
The teen bloggers on Xanga and LiveJournal right now might be the adopters of Blogger and Typepad down the line. Right now, searches on Blogger are about one-tenth of Live Journal and one-fifteenth of Xanga. Typepad doesn’t have enough searches to enter the fray right now. Most full-time bloggers would prefer the tools of these two more “mature” services than the “teenie” blogs, but I just wanted to illustrate where the bulk of searches are headed right now. Keep the feedback coming.
Thanks!
-Erik
Hi,
With the popularity of blogging becomming so widespread lately, I think you’re going to see a lot more up and coming blog directories and specialized search engines jockying for position. A great example is http://getblogs.com I would keep an eye on this one. It may never be a Yahoo! but it’s already one of the best there is.
First, Congratulation for the Blog.
I’ve been surprised to see, as italian spectator, such populariry of xanga or livejournal, when in my mind there is Blogger or Typepad and not many more.
I made a test on blogpulse to see what is the buzz of them in the blogosphere.
Have e look >> http://www.blogpulse.com/trend?query1=blogger&label1=&query2=livejournal&label2=&query3=xanga&label3=
You know if you are having a hard time moving from bookmarks to rss reader you should us Opera 7.5 as your browser. They have a built in rss reader so you don’t need to use two different programs for browsing and reading. go Yahoo!
Though the median age of Livejournal users is probably around 20 (the stats are easy to find on the site), it should be considered one of the mature blog products. LJ users include a wide variety of users, and there are many very well-known technically savvy people who use LJ…for example:
- jwz, one of the first engineers at Netscape
- Paul Phillips, former CTO of go2net, current po-ker whiz
- several Yahoo! engineers who you may know :)
- many unix sysadmins who are very choosy about the software they use
One of the great things about LJ is that they have an interface which works well for users of all experience levels. Also, older folks like me are completely insulated from the teenage angst of the younger LJ crowd.
I don’t really see much that makes Blogger or TypePad more powerful or grown-up than LiveJournal, whereas LiveJournal has some very sophisticated social-networking features based (the network of ‘friends’, friends-only access to posts, threaded comments, ‘communities’…) that rival what was later hyped on services like Friendster and Orkut.
From my LJ perspective I see traditional blogs as rather autistic since the connections to other blogs are so tenuous, and since every post has to be public for the whole world to see. I also see Orkut et al as terribly shallow since there’s no real content there to use to establish friendships.
Even Mena Trott of MT/TypePad has lately been talking about the need for features that facilitate interactions of small networks of people, which she admits LJ has been a pioneer in.
Any know where I can find out true status on Blog’s pages. Like average posts/updates per day. domain area that occurence, etc etc ?? Blogsphere zoning and jurisdiction data(ie. is the blog under Yahoo or google ) etc etc