Just noticed, after reading a post over at skippy that DemVet is getting dumped by other bloggers. After four-plus years, I guess it was bound to happen. My posting is less frequent because my new job involves shift work (they never told me that happened to MBAs) and my visits have gone from around 500/day a year or so ago to under 200.
So ________ and _________ have dumped me ("A" listers). I've often wondered if this quote from Jon Swift was true to some extent (via skippy, of course):
a couple of years ago new york magazine examined who linked to whom in the blogosphere and they discovered that a-list blogs tend to link mostly to other a-list blogs. this elitism strikes me as strangely un-liberal and un-democratic. ironically, major conservative bloggers are on average more inclusive of smaller blogs than major liberal bloggers. although i haven't made a scientific survey, i have noticed that for the most part the blogrolls on the top conservative blogs tend to be bigger than the blogrolls on top liberal blogs. glenn reynolds of instapundit has more than 250 links. michelle malkin has 137. captain's quarters has a whopping 374. compared with them, the blogrolls at the major liberal blogs look downright stingy. they also tend to link to a wider variety of blogs in their posts. that being said both liberals and conservatives tend to link mostly to their own ideological bedfellows.
i think that perhaps the liberal blogosphere could learn something from the conservative blogosphere. for example, there are a number of conservative communities that blogs can join which give their members numerous crosslinks. this tends to raise their profile in technorati rankings, truth laid bear rankings and in google page rank. in his recent post on blogrolling markos said, "a blogroll link isn't a major source of traffic," which may indeed be the case for his blog but not necessarily for those who get a few million fewer hits than he does. he also doesn't take into account the fact that the more links a blog has, the higher it appears in search engines. according to new york magazine, the number of links a blog has tends to correspond with how much traffic it gets.
limiting blogrolls to a few elite blogs, also reduces the diversity. apparently, affirmative action is good for universities, but doesn't apply to blogs. although i am opposed to quotas and am completely colorblind, i would not be surprised if my blogroll is in fact more diverse than those of many major liberal blogs. some bloggers of color have even learned at their peril not to rock the boat too much or risk getting delinked.
Sort of interesting. I was always happy to be linked to by _______ and others (although Kos never gave me the time of day but always cashed my checks; one vet to another, right brother? I never asked him for a link because of contributions, but because back in 2002 DV was one of the few self-identified liberal veteran blogs) being blogrolled by other widely-read blogs was some validation of my writing (or ranting). All of you who stop/stopped by from links they provided gave me feedback and insight to keep writing, and continue to do so to this day.
I don't think I'll stop blogging just yet, but it is disappointing to see that the "A-listers" are consolidating their lists to each other alone. Their blogrolls belong to them, and they can do with them whatever the fuck they want, but carrying on conversations with the same folks is what led to a certain bubbl-ishous Preznit we all know and loathe. I suspect that Atrios is probably correct to revise his links based on "hmmmm...where's that blog again", I don't know about others who have "cleaned house".
I guess maybe it's a learned behaviour. The more famous/powerful/self-important you are, the less your shit doesn't stink. To you.
