Posts tagged as: a_list

Starting work on blog link analysis

A few weeks ago I proposed an analysis of linking patterns between bloggers to measure the frequency of links based on rank. I ran into a few snags, such as getting fed up with some limitations in Ruby and hitting a limit on the number of API calls Technorati would allow per day. I've now finished reading up on a few Web languages, and I've decided to give PHP a try. I plan on working my way through Perl and Python also over the next few months. I've done some work with each of them, but that was before I got interested in XML. Technorati has also generously agreed to boost my daily allotment, so I should have no problem getting the blog rank data I need.

My basic goal is to determine whether bloggers tend to link mostly to others with a similar rank (Crosslinking), or to those with higher (Uplinking) or lower (Downlinking) rank. To do this I will first extract the set of bloggers listed at one time on Tech Memeorandum and use them as my sample. Let's call them the target list of bloggers, or target bloggers for short. I can use the Technorati API to determine the rank of each target blogger, and then split them into 3 groups, with a rank of less than 1,000 signifying membership in the A-list, between 1,000 and 10,000 being the M-list, and the remainder being the Z-list. This analysis alone will be interesting, and I may start compiling longer term statistics on these results. I'll certainly publish this intermediate result here.

The tricky part is determining the rank of the blogs that the target bloggers link to. I can autodiscover the target bloggers' RSS feeds and extract the links from their posts, but Technorati doesn't give a rank for just a post URL. It needs to know the URL of a blog's home page. So what I have to do is autodiscover the RSS feeds of blogs the target bloggers link to, and then look in those RSS feeds to find the home page URL, which can then be used to determine the rank on Technorati. At that point I can count the number of uplinks, downlinks, and crosslinks made by each target blogger. This data can then be analysed.

One systematic error is that A-listers can't uplink, and Z-listers can't downlink. I may just keep the crosslinking results and use them to see how often A-listers, M-listers and Z-listers crosslink as a percentage of their total links.

If you had a problem following this plan, here is the basic path I need to follow: Parse Tech Memeorandum -> Target Blog URLs -> Autodiscover Target Blogs RSS Feeds -> Parse Target blog posts -> Links from target blogs to other blog posts -> Autodiscover RSS Feeds of the linked blog posts - > URLs of blogs linked to by target blogs ->Rank of blogs linked to by target blogs.

You can follow the coding on my programming blog where I'll post all of my source code and links to my intermediate data sets. I could store all the data in a MySQL database, but I want to make it publicly accessible, so I'll store it in XML files on the website. I'll report on any useful results here as well as the code blog.

Revenge of the M-list

I chose this site's title and tagline, because I am fascinated by the social and technical forces causing change on the Internet. One aspect of that fascination is the role of the blogosphere's A-list. At first there was a single list covering all bloggers, but as the blogosphere has segmented along lines of interest, such as tech and politics, distinct A-lists have emerged. But the principle has stayed the same, within each niche there is a small clique that is read the most, and gets the most traffic and links.

It is easy to see how this clique's rank is maintained by reading Robert Scoble's blog (no general link is required, because you are already subscribed). I've never met Scoble, but I'm sure I'd like him in person. I don't think he'd let you not like him in person. He does, however, have an annoying habit of writing "That's great [A-lister]!" posts, a phenomenon known as getting scobled. For example, today he starts his post on the new Tech Memeorandum design with "Hey, Gabe, love the new design of Memeorandum!" For the technical quibblers, Gabe Rivera is not an official A-List blogger, since he rarely blogs, but his site gives him honorary status. (Oops, mustn't piss off Gabe. I love the redesign too, Gabe!)

Scobling is practiced by many A-listers, which is best demonstrated by the huge A-list threads that develop on Memeorandum whenever Mike Arrington has a party or releases a product. Since traffic and therefore rank is determined by the number of links, scobling is clearly self-reinforcing. This leads to accusations of A-listers being guilty of gatekeeping. Darwin explained this in terms of mating habits, where members of the same species have common behaviors, such as times of activity and feeding patterns that encourage intra-species sexual activity. Ironically, even hate sites reinforce the rank of A-listers.

This begs the question, how did A-listers get on the list in the first place? Darwin's response to the same question applied to origin of new species was that some new competitive pressure or geographic isolation must have emerged to cause the standard lines of association to break down. In the blogosphere this takes the form of a new technological advance in the tech world, or a new scandal in the political world. I've seen many blogosphere analysts use this argument to explain how an A-lister emerged after a burst of blogging surrounding a story of extreme interest.

I think there is also a more gradual phenomenon that I call the revenge of the M-list. When a new area of interest develops, such as what we are now seeing with OPML reading lists, a group of mutually linking bloggers emerges. If one of these bloggers is an A-lister, then the majority of the links point to his or her posts on the subject. If, on the other hand, the inter-linkers are all middle ranked bloggers, let's call them M-listers, they tend to link to each other fairly liberally. As new people become interested in the subject, they find these clusters of posts (memetracking sites do a great job of revealing M-list clusters), and also link to many of the blogs in the cluster, since there is no one recognizable A-lister to link to exclusively. In time the M-lister who is most prolific on this subject, but not necessarily the best writer or scobler, acquires even more links. Eventually this blogger becomes the authority on the subject, and even A-listers take note and deliver links. The resulting accumulation of links are enough to reach A-list status. Thus we have a slow bubbling up from the middle, rather than the overnight success story so often told by analysts.

There is a simple experiment to test this theory. First all the posts appearing on a memetracker can be extracted, and the bloggers separated by Technorati rank into A-list and M-list. Then the inter-links can be analyzed to see if M-listers do indeed form clusters of links with other M-listers. We already know that A-listers inter-link, but that can be tested for as well. Finally, these groups of M-list linkers can be followed over time to see if any individuals rise in rank to A-list status. A group of M-listers not in a cluster should also be followed as a control. I'm planning on working on Technorati rank analysis of Tech Memeorandum posts this week, so I'll see if I can contribute some scripts or XML data files that can assist in this experiment.

Suck up follow up

Guy Kawasaki has posted a brilliant response to the A-list bloggers who were shocked that anyone has to suck up to a blogger. They surely didn't suck up to anyone to reach their exalted posts, and now don't expect anyone to suck up to them. No. Everyone who attends their book parties and barbeques are close personal friends with no ulterior motives.

Visit Guy's page to add your own caption to his suck up cartoon. This is perfect Guy, skewer them and keep smiling the whole time. Guy helped reinvent PR in his early days at Apple. For anyone who didn't get to see it then, you have a treat in store for you as he takes on the A-list as his way of getting to the top of it.

How not to suck up to a blogger

Guy Kawasaki has listed some of the techniques that you can use to get bloggers to write about your new product. My favorite from Guy's list is to send an email with the following message:

It's easy to see why Guy is the first person enrolled in the tech evangelists hall of fame. He also has some important advice on how not to suck up to bloggers: Let me state this advice more forcefully. NEVER spam a blogger. In the past week I've received three emails aimed at getting me to write about a new website, two one of which is clearly are a bulk mailings from people someone who may never have read my blog. I could be flattered to be on a list of tech bloggers who are considered spam worthy, but I have a very low threshold for spam. When it comes to my personal account, I always apply filters immediately that trash email from the sender's address. I'm going to start applying the same practice for email sent to this blog's address, but I'll take it one step further. I'm going to produce my own tech blacklist of companies that send me spam about their new product. If a company lands on this list, I will never mention them in a post, forever. I won't include Megite and Edgeio this time, but they have it has now been warned.

So, am I becoming a blog diva? Do I think I'm so popular now that I have to ask to be left alone? Of course not. I love getting email from people building cool new software. I'm just afraid of what will happen if every new Web 2.0 company starts following the lead of Edgeio and Megite. I can just see it now, some PR flack at a Techcrunch Silicon Valley party bragging, "Dude, we spammed all those tech bloggers, and you should see the links we got back!"

Here's a better method. When a blogger writes something that you like, or that might relate to the area in which you want to launch a product, send an email with a supporting comment, or a joke about the content of the post. If they respond, then follow this up some time later with another. Even better, do this on your blog. Then, when you have a product you want to hype, go ahead and send an email, but you still have to make it an individualized message. At least have the decency to get your programmer to build an email merge that includes some details related to that specific blogger.

So feel free to contact me (adam AT darwinianweb DOT com) about your new site or product. Just be warned, if it is clearly a mass mailing, it will backfire.

(Update: Mike Arrington has reminded me that I must have submitted my email address to the Edgeio landing page at some point. At age 50 I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday, so I obviously forgot this fact. I've crossed out the references to Edgeio, which I'm sure is a great product. My bad. Young people still say that, don't they? In fact, Mike has offered me a phone demo. Maybe he'll even let me sit on his couch some day. )

Doc: Let one new blogger through the gate each day

Doc Searls is involved in a discussion with Seth Finkelstein over the role of a-list bloggers as gatekeepers, and he seems genuinely concerned about this problem. He asks how he can change this. "I'll just add that, if ya'll want to subvert some hierarchies, including the one you see me in now, I'd like to help." The answer is simple Doc, just find a good post from a blogger you haven't noticed before and link to it. You can direct a firehose of traffic to a blog by doing this. On the basis of karma alone it is a good idea. Think about how you would have felt if one of the cool crowd in high school had asked the buck-toothed kid to sit with them at lunch.

Mike Arrington bares his soul

This seems to be the day for blogebrity revelations. Techcrunch's Mike Arrington has exposed the trials and tribulations of being the most powerful tech blogger in the world on his personal Crunchnotes blog. Very revealing. It's like reading Jack Nicholson's blog and seeing him complain about not getting laid.

I didn't realize that there is an actual A-List

I always thought that the A-list for bloggers was metaphorical. Now I see that it really exists, along with a B-list and C-list. I feel like I just stumbled on the Free Mason's site and found the actual plans to take over the world. (via Jeneane Sessum)