C-List Blogging

This comes via Michael Hanscom, and it’s an interesting view on the various levels of the “blogosphere.”

Extrapolating some work I did last year, only about 20,000 blogs (a mere 0.4% of all active blogs) have a sizeable audience (more than 10 regular visitors and more than 150 hits per average day), and readership in a typical day is only a little more than three million people, each spending an average of about 20 minutes flitting among 15 blog pages.

Using Shirky’s Power Law, and adding in RSS subscriptions to the hit count totals, that would break today’s blogosphere audience down roughly as follows:

	Total Hits/Day	Average Hits/Day per Blog	Minimum Hits/Day per Blog	Average Aggregate Reader Attention/Day per Blog
100 A-list bloggers	15 million	150,000	15,000	1700 hrs
2,000 B-list bloggers	5 million	2,500	1,000	62 hrs
18,000 C-list bloggers	9 million	500	150	13 hrs
80,000 up-and-coming bloggers	8 million	100	50	2.5 hrs
5 million remaining active bloggers	15 million	3	0	–

Judging by my stats, I’m flitting between low end B-List Blogging and high end C-List Blogging, which is kinda cool when I think about it, and following the redirection of the Paris Hilton address book pages, I was an A-List Blogger for a few days last week, but that doesn’t count for much on the grand scheme of things… And Simon Dodson brought up a good point in a MSN conversation today:

Returned – s: so when u on cnn ?
Gregor Smith: never
Gregor Smith: the closest i’ve been to being on cnn is being in the cnn center in atlanta :P
Returned – s: alot of my personal friends
Returned – s: ones i see IRL
Returned – s: really dig your blog
Returned – s: they mention it to me a few times just in general speech
Gregor Smith: cool
Returned – s: arrr //slaps
Gregor Smith: i’m still surprised anyone reads it :P it’s really not much different ot stuff you can find elsewhere
Returned – s: i feel the same way
Returned – s: but they come
Returned – s: & enjoy
Returned – s: neat huh !
Gregor Smith: true…
Gregor Smith: it’s the old “if you dont want people to read it then why write” kinda argument
Returned – s: my thoery is ” i did not ask you to read it ” if ya nahwahmean
Gregor Smith: maybe my dreams of being like kottke arent too far away :P
Returned – s: i sometimes wonder where blogging will lead to .. and its kinda mainstream now but blogs like ours .. semi pro are established and look legit ya knows!
Returned – s: you learn over time wat to write and wat not to write
Gregor Smith: yeah
Gregor Smith: thanks to this blogs.salon.com/0002007/categories/blogsBlogging/2005/01/04.html#a1004 i’ve deduced i’m a borderline b or c list blogger (dependding on the day)
Returned – s: neat

It’s all about what you know to write and what not to write…