Comments on: The Pareto Principle and Blog Networks

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:24:44 +0000

Yes, Arrington definitely has a leg up with any new site he starts. I was withholding from using him as an example because he doesn’t really have a deep network yet, but you can definitely see the potential if he wishes to pursue something.

By: engtech

engtech — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:29:23 +0000

I think TechCrunch and CrunchGear are a perfect example. See http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=325

TechCrunch is sitting at #5 on Technorati, and they’ve gotten CrunchGreat to around #500 (and over 32000 RSS readers) since it opened in the summer.

By: How Do You Talk About the Competition? » Wisdump

How Do You Talk About the Competition? » Wisdump — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 21:47:30 +0000

[...] Internally I’m sure we are all aware that we shouldn’t ignore the competition, but that doesn’t mean that externally we should show that we acknowledge them. For 9rules our competition is considered to be other content networks and blog networks so if I write an entry like the previous one it can be taken as writing about the competition. [...]

By: Aidan Henry

Aidan Henry — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:58:26 +0000

I absolutely agree with your argument that web 2.0 may be a specialty case. Between TC, Mashable, GigaOM, Read/Write Web, and Micropersuasion, it is my guess that these blogs garnered most of the traffic.

On a wider scale, however, I still see the skew as being more disproportional than people imagine. I think that networks like Gawker and Weblogs promote this imbalance via tight control and widespread inter-linking. In addition, ‘professional business practices’ ensure that blogs are updated on a regular basis, edited properly, and provide quality of the utmost level.

I’m finding it hard to effectively present my view in words, but I think you get the gist of it :)

Cheers,
Aidan

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:35:13 +0000

Good observation Aidan and I’m glad you pointed out a common misconception of the principle. The principle isn’t there to definie 80/20, but suggests that anywhere you look you will find a ratio of a smaller group causing the large portion of the changes.

In the case of Web 2.0 blogs, TC is definitely on the left side of the curve, while everyone else is the right. However, I don’t think you can just look at one industry because when you do so you realize you have all the sites talking about the same thing so of course one site is going to dominate over another.

Looking at the blogosphere as a whole though you can definitely see the Pareto Principle in effect here and it makes more sense.

By: Aidan Henry

Aidan Henry — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:30:05 +0000

Interesting article Scrivs. Nicely done.

I understand and appreciate the concept of the Pareto principle, but my belief has been that blogs take this concept to a whole new level. In other words, I believe that 10% of all blogs get 90% of the traffic, or even higher – possibly even 95/5. The ‘token’ blogs (TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Boing Boing) seem to appear a majority of blog rolls and garnered immense traffic.

In this day and age, the difference between an ‘A’ list blogger and a ‘B’ list blogger is substantial to say the least. For this very reason, I believe that the split is even more pronounced.

Cheers,
Aidan