The Techmeme Leaderboard, CrunchBase Bloggerboard and my own All-Time Techmeme Leaderboard only take into account the Headlines on Techmeme. However, most of the interesting discussion happens in the, err, Discussion Links. So, I consider them as important, if not more important, than the headlines.
But, there is no Leaderboard for the Discuss Links. Until now, that is. Here it is:
This one is way more different from the AllTime Headlines Leaderboard, and contains several surprises.
First, Techcrunch isn’t No.1. They are No.8. Engadget, Gizmodo, Mashable, Wired Blog all pass over it (Gizmodo should actually be ranked higher than Engadget, since there is a duplicate “with” the www. at No.94 with 299 posts). Surprising for me, WebProNews, a site I have not visited even once in my 4 years of internet life (no offense to the fine folks there), beat TechCrunch. Is this because whenever TechCrunch discusses something, it becomes the Headline?
Note that No.1 in this list, ZDNet Blogs, includes a host of bloggers. Digg and Slashdot appear here, while they are absent in the Headlines leaderboard. Natural, since Digg and /. are places of “discussion”.
Also, I think this one has more “unknowns” in it than popular ones. Mainstream media is either absent or considerably lower down (NYTimes is 54th!). LouisGray says discussion links are where the copy cats live(update: He says some are copycats, not all). Comments?
P.S. I’m working on making charts comparing the distribution of “power” in both the lists. Also, if I do a “Discussion Authors Leaderboard”, the results are surprising. Stay tuned. This should be interesting…
5 responses so far ↓
1 louisgray // May 13, 2008 at 1:10 pm
To be clearer… now that I’m being quoted… it’s common that the Discussion links come from either lesser-known publications, who don’t have as many links coming their way, or they are following the original news, and linking to that. That’s where you’d come up with the copy angle. But most are legitimate.
2 Cyndy Aleo-Carreira // May 14, 2008 at 5:16 am
*sigh* Louis, you should have quit while you were ahead.
Having shown up several times in “Discussion” links when my article had little or nothing to do with the headline, I do take offense to the “copy” issue. And as a blogger, it gets tiring when I’m repeatedly told I’m supposed to live and die by Techmeme. I write about what interests me. Period.
3 The Embargo Breaks: The Regurgitation of a Press Release - Profy.Com // May 14, 2008 at 8:30 am
[...] StatBot just posted a Techmeme leaderboard for discussion links. If I do happen to actually peruse Techmeme, those are the links I head to for the most part, and [...]
4 Josh Catone // May 14, 2008 at 9:54 am
You should create a leaderboard that takes into account both discussion and headline links. I.e., total presence. That would be interesting to see.
@Louis: I had sort of the same idea: this is the “echochamber list” (that thought was mostly tongue-in-cheek).
@Yuvi: If you do the combined list, be sure to take into account that sometimes headline links fall to discussion — and vice versa.
5 Techmeme All Time All Links Leaderboard from The Statbot - The StatBot - Fun stats. Visualizations. Leaderboards. // May 16, 2008 at 10:09 am
[...] Techmeme "Discussion" Links AllTime Leaderboard from The Statbot