Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?

Ed: @Amit. @Brian. agreed. Technorati’s authority is questionable.

comShare, Nielsen, Quantcast, google analytics, hitwise, and weblogs are also under fire. MIT Technology Review just updated the status.

What may be relevant is that

1. The web is morphing faster than anyone pundit can comprehend. Think blind men and the elephant. The Software Platforms supersite crowd-sources and tracks over 200 platforms like Google Apps, AJAXAPI, MapAPI, etc. That’s probably 10% of the available platforms on the web.

2. User attention is shifting fast. One report shows that social networks, with all its variations like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, disqus, etc has passed email for user time and frequency.

3. Analytics quickly lose relevance. If you can’t see the whole, how can you program the algorythms to track what’s relevant?

4. Without relevant data, how do pundits forecast the future?

Intuition rules in this state of chaos. But with millions forecasting the future state of the web, the chances for anyone to be right declines.

As a past econometrician, we had a saying. If you don’t know the answer, forecast often. If you’re right, tell the world. If you’re wrong, forecast again.

The report on the data is useful. Hope that Brian is not forecasting like past econometricians.

Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?

46 Comments

by Brian Solis on March 10, 2009

Depending on which numbers you source or believe, all reports agree that the blogosphere continues to expand globally.

As the leading blog directory and search engine, Technorati maintains a coveted Authority Index which is considered amongst bloggers as the benchmark for measuring their rank and selling their position within the blogosphere. (At least until recently). Authority in the index is defined as the number of blogs linking to a website within the last six months. The higher the number, the greater the level of Authority a blog earns.

However, a disruptive trend is already at play. While blogs are increasing in quantity, their authority–as currently measured by Technorati–is collectively losing influence. For instance, just last November, Technorati counted 32,493 links towards gadget blog Engadget’s “authority.” Today, it counts half that amount (16,326). Even TechCrunch’s link authority as measured by Technorati is down by several thousand links, yet its relative position in the overall ranking (No. 3) hasn’t moved.

In its annual state of the blogosphere last year, Technorati revealed that it had indexed 133 million blog records since 2002. In March 2008, Universal McCann published a report that indicated 184 million blogs worldwide were created, with 346 million people reading blogs globally.

Blogging is entrenched in the mainstream. Indeed, consumers, businesses, content publishers, and media channels are embracing blogs as a way of engaging existing and reaching new readers to build an ecosystem around relevant conversations. It’s the convergence of dialog and journalism, creating a new generation of interconnectedness between publisher and community.

So why do I believe that blog authority is losing its authority?