I went over to the income.com blog recently, to see how they were doing, and whether the fury about all those blogs getting axed had simmered down. It obviously hadn’t, since comments are still firmly switched off. It unfortunately makes the blog all but worthless, since there is no point of view presented other than the owner’s.
The only thing I picked up from it, was that BlogRush is going to launch a sister site, called TrafficJam.com - and to me it looks like it could become a site to get the big bloggers even more publicity (it’s been argued that BlogRush is already just that). The idea is to rate the hottest posts from the BlogRush network, and rank them by category, based on their “buzz” factor. Before I continue, I better find out just how buzz works.
Google Search…
Here we are, thanks to widgets-blog.com
This new meter will tell you if that post is HOT, COLD, or somewhere in between. The meter ‘temperature’ is calculated based on the average click-rates per headline for your blog’s category.
If this is true, then I feel slightly confused. When you click on a blogrush post headline, you don’t know whether the post will be any good. You have no idea what the content is, and whether it is actually relevant to what you want. All you know is the headline, and (crucially) the blog name. So, that’s 2 pieces of information you’ve got to gauge - how catchy is the headline, and what blog is it.
This is not the same as determining what the hottest posts are. A catchy headline on a well-known blog will get a lot of clickthroughs, but that has no bearing on the content of the post now does it. So, lets get that straight - the “hottest” posts will be a combination of post title + blog rep.
Could this lead to the larger blogs being near the top? Well yes, it certainly could, but it isn’t inevitable. It will be interesting to see how the ranking works out, and what gets to the top. If it is filled with the blogs of gurus and other well-known blogs, then the system will be a failure in my eyes. Yes, the popular blogs have a lot of good content, but they certainly can’t lay claim to all of it. A more accurate list will contain a bit of weighting towards title, sure, with no weighting given towards blog name (should that continue to be shown on the widget?) - with the main factor being the popularity of the content once the user has clicked through.
There are 10s of thousands of small blogs out there, and many come with good unique content - and that’s what the BlogRush network should be connecting people to. Everyday, people discover blogs they’d never heard of before, and like them because of the quality of the content.
Content quality is a harder thing to measure, but if you’re going to try and rank how hot a post is, then you can’t base it on clickthrough rates, when the content hasn’t even been seen yet. If they can pull off something close to the above, then it will certainly be a useful list to look at every so often. If its based purely on clickthrough rates, then its probably going to be weighted towards the big guys, since their brand is displayed along with the post title.