I’ve just finalised a revised list of blog networks and posted it here at The Blog Herald for those interested, but I thought I might share a few more thoughts on the subject.
Blog networks are growing. I originally wrote the first version of the list on the fly because I’d noticed that there seemed to be more networks emerging lately, and thought it would be an interesting thing to do. I didn’t realise however just quite how many there were, and the amazing diversity available on them.
People talk about the power of blogging but its only (if you’re like me) start seeing numbers that the influence of blogs, even in this case corporate and network blogs, can and are having.
Let me guess a figure: combined traffic for all the blog networks on the list..at least 50-100 million page views per day, if not higher again. If every blog network on this list combined you’d deliver a media company that would potentially have enough long tail influence to be a major, multi-billion dollar company spanning 4 continents, employing hundreds (if not thousands) of people and reaching directly and indirectly to at least half of all internet users on the planet every single day. Hype? look at some of the figures in Alexa for the blogs on WeblogsInc, Gawker and the Ist network for example. Take a look at some of the other networks; Shiny is making big inroads in the UK, some of the non-English speaking blog networks are trailblazers in Europe and making big inroads. And here’s my next prediction: Jason Calacanis is potentially the next Rupert Murdoch of the blogosphere (sure without the famous war correspondent father and without being born in Adelaide but you get the drift…). The blog networks keep getting bigger and bigger and Calacanis is at the top of the pack. I can feel a flame war coming on with this, but none the less as a reader I challenge you with these facts, take out the hype in the blogosphere and look at the figures, blog networks continue to grow, continue to become more and more influential, and as a consequence blogging will change the world as we know it.
