Blogsphere Dynamic

GalleySlaves has some intereting things to say about liberal blogger MyDD's article on conservative vs. liberal traffic stats.

Essentially, MyDD noticed that while there are still significantly more conservative blogs in the top 200 as regards visits, that the liberals are disproportionally represented in the top 40. These top blogs have been growing in visits much more rapidly than the top conservative blogs. What they have in common is that they all allow comments, while Instapundit, Powerline, NRO, etc. generally do not.

He also points out that a number of the mid-string liberal blogs got their starts as commentors or diarists on the big liberal blogs, thus getting a built in readership. Conservative bloggers on the other hand have to start their own blogs and then rely on links to major bloggers to get their traffic infusions.

Then he goes on to speculate that this is because liberals are generally egalitarian while conservatives are more hierarchical. (You would think that would mean there would just be a few large conservative blogs that all conservatives read in lock-step, with no new startups...)

Well, as far as it goes, a lot of this is non-surprising. People will visit a site with comments more often for the simple reason that there's more content there to read. And yeah, you can get readership if you post interesting comments and people then follow the link to your site.

However, I don't go to sites like NRO and PowerLine looking for community. I go there looking for good content with a strong editorial line.

And (avid comment boxer though I am at times) reading people get excited about every dang topic can get older after a while... (And can you imagine how many comments there would be on the Corner? I have trouble keeping up with it as it is.)