Archive for the ‘Techmeme’ Category
Barriers to Entry on the Techmeme Leaderboard increasing?
Preemptive comment: No, I wasn’t dead. Just couldn’t do any real work because I was busy grinding through the system getting admitted into college. Grinding over now 
That was the question that turned up on my head some time back – and I investigated.
The answer is – not much. As you can see, it’s been between 0.15% and 0.20% pretty much throughout. So, the “barriers to entry” aren’t really increasing.
Update: I just looked up the number of new entrants to the Leaderboard:
Compared to 2007, there is less fluctuation now. Good/Bad thing? I don’t know. Comments?
Techmeme All Time All Links Leaderboard from The Statbot
Posted by Yuvi in Leaderboards, Techmeme on May 15th, 2008
In the comments of my Techmeme Discussion Links Leaderboard, Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb suggested I do a Leaderboard combining both the Headlines and the Discussion links. Well, here it is:
Note that ZDNet Blogs are an entire group of blogs. So, while ZDNet blogs are technically the first in this list, Engadget is the “real” first here. Comments?
Also, Ryan Spoon has done a couple of cool charts with my past Leaderboards. Cool stuff!
One more Techmeme Post, I promise, and then I’ll move on to different quarry
My older leaderboards here(Headlines) and here (Discussion)
Techmeme "Discussion" Links AllTime Leaderboard from The Statbot
Posted by Yuvi in Leaderboards, Techmeme on May 13th, 2008
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…
The All Time Techmeme Leaderboard from The Statbot
Posted by Yuvi in Leaderboards, Techmeme on May 9th, 2008
The Techmeme leaderboard is limited only to the past 30 days. Here’s the Top 100 Sites on Techmeme, all time:
This list, is somewhat different from the current official one one. Most notable is that Engadget, which is at #2 here, is at #15 right now, while ReadWriteWeb, which is at #12 here, is at #4 now. TechCrunch keeps ruling, though it’s “presence” (i.e. Headlines from Site / Total Headlines) is drastically lower here than it is right now. Here’s a small chart showing how things changed:
TechCrunch has always been ahead of the rest, except for a brief time during March 08 when CNET News.com almost went over TechCrunch, but TechCrunch then breaks free and goes way past CNET News.com. The NYTimes has been “very” consistent here, with a pretty straight curve, while ReadWriteWeb has been slowly climbing.
But, Engadget has taken a nosedive after actually overtaking CNET News.com for a period of time in Jan 08 (CES, I presume). It’s now contributing less than 1% of Techmeme Headlines. Any thoughts why this is the case?
One third of Techmeme’s headlines come from the Long Tail: The Statbot
(Note: This is a part of a series of articles on the Techmeme leaderboard. Stay tuned for more)
The Techmeme Leaderboard, though less than a year old, is already THE authority on, well, authority on the blogosphere (Technorati Top 100 is THE authority on popularity). Analysis of authority is always interesting, so I headed over to the Techmeme Leadeboard, and conjured this analysis out of thin air
Long Tail Playground? Or A-List party place?
(This graph would have looked like a flag if not for the pseudo-3D look, no?)
As you can see, the top 10 sites contribute about ~29% of the headline content, and the Top 25 contribute about 45%. More importantly, the sites that have never set foot on the Top 100 contribute 33%, or about one third of the headlines. Here’s a perhaps-easier-to-grok pie chart of the same data:
This pie chart represents the state of the Techmeme Leaderboard at this instant. 28% of all stories come from the Top 10 sites. However, 32% come from sites which are not in the Top 100.
So, a large number of small blogs contribute about one third of Techmeme’s headlines. Long tail playground.
This is the first in a series of posts dissecting the Techmeme Leaderboard. If you have any specific things you need to know, post ‘em over in the comments (Louis Gray already sent me his list ;))
