Yesterday The Observer listed 50 of the world’s most powerful blogs. The list is varied, containing news blogs such as The Huffington Post, personal blogs such as Dooce, interest groups such as Tree Hugger and “just for laugh blogs”?, an office favourite here, icanhascheezburger. The list also includes many celeb obsessed blogs such as Holy Moly, TMZ and Perez Hilton.
This raises a question, are these blogs powerful or just popular? We have noted that the readership of this blog increases when we post controversial news sources, and when Gawker posts come through our readers we can’t help but click through to the funny stories of celebrities. However, I must admit that despite clicking though and laughing for a few seconds at these posts, I am more likely to digest and even act upon blog posts that I read on more reputable blogs such as Mashable or Brand Republic. So I think there needs to be more of a distinction between popularity and powerful.
Also we noted a lack of UK blogs. From my experience of blog research (which I do almost daily) I can see an explanation for this – the UK blogsphere is approximately 12 months behind that of the US. It is much easier to find relevant blogs in the US than the UK, but I am optimistic that in the next 6 months we will see the UK catching up, it was nice to see some UK blogs such as Hecklerspray and The Offside make the cut already and next year I’d expect to see a few more Brit blogs on there!
I agree with your comments. I didn’t really like the approach of the Observer list. Power is not what it’s about. Influence is the key and blogs are niche not mass. I think they missed a lot of really good blogs off the list which are in the UK – what about some of the BBC blogs for goodness sake?!
Good point. Clay Shirky makes it in his new book Here Comes Everyone. Its a must read.
Oh… and if you track back on the dates of UK blogs for clients… last November the rate of posting zoomed ahead.
Thanks for your comments, Justin – I think that the title 50 most powerful brands was a bit to generic, if there were sub catagories I am sure this and the BBC’s blogs would have made it!
Oh and I will keep an eye out for the book Here Comes Everyone!