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Wednesday November 22, 2006

Technorati: Measuring Volume not Value

Technorati recently published a state of the blogosphere about 2 weeks ago. And I’ve wanted to write on it ever since as an example of being clear on what you are intending to measure and what you are actually measuring.

The slide I’m referencing is this one:

In it, Technorati, is defining “authority” ratings of the blog universe. And their authority measures are measuring the average # of posts per day and how long that blogger has been posting. What this is measuring is not so much authority in my mind as productivity, propensity to produce, or velocity. The measure is how much volume someone is producing. Which is certainly one measure of authority.

One could argue that many who write often are not necessarily the highest “authorities” online.

Might I suggest another metric of “authority”? Measure traffic of blogs against the number of discrete articles. That would measure the impact of those articles. It might allow the authority measure of someone who’s primary role is not to publish, but as a sideline interest to write. So they might write sporadically or even consistently at some different rate (say once a week). If they are getting volume readers, and more importantly repeat readers perhaps THEY are a different kind of authority? Perhaps they represent the more sage, considered point of view one listens to and savors. Just an interesting way of looking at metrics once again.

Technorati Tags:
metrics, Technorati