OpenEntrance - What’s Really Going OnWhat’s Really Going On

As a follow up to my previous post, Top 10 Best Blogs On The Web, there was some very good discussion among the people who commented that all of the blogs on the list dealt with celebrity entertainment gossip and that there was no inclusion of blogs on the topics of more substance like politics, race, relationships, etc. I would totally agree, but there are a couple of reasons that more blogs of opinionated topics were not included:

1) I put the list together based on blogs I am aware and since I do not know of all blogs that exist, my rankings are not all inclusive. It is a list that I expect to change and evolve over time, but as my blog has been about celebrity gossip, those are the the blogs that I am more familiar with, although I have become bored with topic.

2) My list was based on traffic stats and gossip blogs get much more traffic and are much more well known through word-of-mouth than blogs of more serious topics. This is true for both black blogs and non-black blogs. Perez Hilton gets a lot more traffic than the Huffington Post.

2) Any measure you use (traffic, technorati ranking, alexa ranking, search engine links, comments per post, whatever) celebrity blogs are still more popular simply because more people read those blogs on a regular basis than other topics.

I guess I am most surprised that it was not expected that primarily Gossip blogs would outrank blogs of more serious topics. The online world mirrors the offline world in most ways. The same reason that Flava of Love gets more viewers than the Presidential debates is the same reason that Gossip blogs are more popular than other blogs.

Electronic Village compiles a list of Top Black Blogs on his site which is more inclusive than my list, although his rankings are several months old, so mine will get their. His rankings are based on Technorati rankings which ranks blogs based on the number of links that blog has received from other blogs in the last 6 months. Several of the blogs in his Top 10 are also in my Top 10. Gossip Blogs are simply more popular and I think that represents two realities. First, that there is a lack of concern with major issues effecting our lives and existence and 2) that people firmly understand the issues that exist for them and their communities and they use their time for entertainment(watching TV, reading blogs, etc) to escape those harsh realities for a short period of time.

I am not saying that it is right that we as black people spend more time reading about Gossip than other issues, but I am not saying it is wrong either. It is what it is. There are also many other reasons why Gossip blogs are more well trafficked than other blogs:

1) Ease of Posting - It is far easier to produce content for a Gossip blog than it is for a political blog. If you are focused and half way decent at using blogging software, you can post at least 3-4 gossip posts in an hour. There is typically very little original thought necessary outside of writing a sentence or two and the content is readily abundant, just take it from another blog and hope your readers have not read it elsewhere first. On a good day a blog of more substance hopes to post 1-2 times while celebrity blogs post 10-15 posts per day. More of a reason for a visitor to come back more frequently. Additionally, comments on gossip blogs are more prone to turn into group discussions than other blogs. Thus increasing pageviews and traffic as the person that is at work and trying to hide their computer usage has to keep coming back to the site.

2) People simply don’t read - People don’t read long posts, or long books, or long magazine articles, etc. I know everyone reading this now is saying, “I read everything, I love reading” but the reality is that most people only read short articles if they read at all. Not sure if this quote that I heard the other day is totally accurate, but I tend to believe it is that “70% of college graduates never read another book in their life.” People who read a lot, read everything. Those that don’t read, simply don’t read.

3) More Opinionated, But Not Always Interesting - To go along with people not reading much, is the length of articles on sites of more substance tend to be much longer and filled with a person’s opinions. Gossip blogs are rumors that typically have some level of truth to them. I know some blogs make up stories totally, but in general the gossip sites are based on observation and in most cases are true. Opinion blogs are someones opinions which are based on facts, which quite honestly is not always very interesting. I cringe to say that because I know people are putting their heart and soul into their blogs and feel like every post that they make is “hot fire,” but the reality is that they are not all that good. I would equate it to that aspiring rapper that is constantly spitting a “hot 16″ and his closest friends are telling him the greatest, but no one else will even listen. I know a lot of people complained when I listed my blogs based on traffic, but is your blog really that good if no one is reading it?

4) Search Engines - Gossip blogs get more traffic in a lot of cases by search engines. Gossip blogs have both images and articles that can rank and draw traffic. If that is what people are searching for, that is what they are interested in. My blog for instance ranks on the first page of Google Images for Djimon Hounsou, Kimora Lee Simmons, and many other terms. This is an advantage that celebrity bloggers have over other blogs of more “substance” in ways of increasing traffic. And not to get too much into Search Engine Optimization, but Gossip blogs have a higher page rank in a lot of cases so as Gossip bloggers link together, just like blogs of other categories, they move up in rankings together. It is like the community moves as a whole. So if you network with a bunch of other blogger who get very little traffic and have low page rank, most likely you will all be in the same category.

5) Viral Content - Gossip blogs grow in traffic because their content is more viral. If you are not familiar viral content, it is the content that spread quickly via word of mouth without the need of a marketing effort. Readers are much more like to forward a post about Jay-Z’s alleged kid than they are about the problems with the global warming crisis. So as people forward around links to their friends, it exponentially increases traffic.

This list could go on and on, but the reality is that more people are interested in Gossip blogs. I read them both, but I realize most people don’t, which is fine. The good thing that has come out of my Top Ten post is that I am aware of several other blogs that I was not aware of and I will be working with Electronic Village going forward on his Top Ten List, so that we have one that is more inclusive. I doubt that the rankings will change much though.

Here is a list of some good blogs that I discovered since my last post:

Rashunda Tramble
MindSpill

Listen To Leon
Miss Mwabi
Soul Pitch HustleBlack
Repping Beantown
Black Girl Lost
The B-Life
Pull Joy
Theo Talks
Queen Esther
Urban Horror
Akiit
Straight From The A
Black And Married With Kids
Mind Warz
Rashid Muhammad
The Rich House
Electronic Village

Pop Culture Junkie is a site where the name pretty much speaks for itself. The site is maintained by Melody, 25, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The site is just about a year old and has passed the point where most bloggers fall off and stop updating.

 The Good:  The site is always regularly updated and does a good job of being balanced and not simply covering all of the bad things that happen in Pop Culture. The site has had some exclusive interviews with Bobby Valentino, Joe, and Africa Miranda just to name a few. The site also has a nice two-column design with good coloring that does not scream out the page is trying to do too much(that happens a lot).

The Bad: The site sometimes runs slow. This is more a problem of Google and the resources they dedicate to Blogger than a reflection of the blog itself. A lot of blogs on Blogger run slow sometimes, but runs okay most of the time.

Overall, Pop Culture Junkie is a site that is fun to read and good to check regularly. Typically, you will find a story or two that is different than all of the rest of the Celebrity News blogs are running.