I was sitting down doing my thesis when I realize something interesting. In real life, we often see the establishment of companies that has been here for a longer time to be more credible/popular/richer compared to new startups. That is the basic theme of “barriers to entry”, in which older companies are already entrenched in the market and creates barriers for new entrants. However, with the Internet, it seems that age of a blog/website no longer matters. Content and who you are linked to seems to be the key to gaining credibility online. What has caused this major change?
I am just questioning whether this represents a complete change in the way that the online economy functions. It does not matter anymore whether you are in the Internet for 5 years. You are likely to be oust within 6 months for a young upstart if you do not innovate and create new and exciting content. It’s no longer that easy any more, huh? As you can tell, I am mostly working on my dissertation paper lately to prepare for the 8th World Media Economics academic conference in May 18-22th and also on another project that I will inform the kind readers. This is why I am not replying lately. This will change after the Spring Season starts, because I am feeling sad I have nothing to write about.
So, for a parting question, what do you think is the main driving factor to get popularity? Is it content, being here for a long time, who you are linked to or some other factor? If you can only choose one of the three factors in your blog, what will you choose?
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Content is probably the most important- well quality content that is.
But for some older ‘firms’ maybe because they are so old so that they forget to tend to their blogs and then some new one which is more effecient would take over since the speed and the quality of the content is good- especially if they onld concentrate on a ‘niche’ part of the anime blogs e.g. one or two anime titles…
Content definitely works for me, but staying current with the latest anime seems to work best in general as well as notoriety and satire.
Content works best only if your reader happens to read every word you type, which may not be always the case. Depends on luck. I mean, I am faced with about a 20-30 new blogposts on anime to read everyday and most of them I skim through.
Thus, paragraphing and picture placement also do help. ESPECIALLY paragraphing.
Some blogs do become “entrenched” though. However, since there are no traditional “barriers to entry”, as long as you got a valid and interesting point, there is no stopping anyone from reading your blog.
Well, if the blog has been long existent, more often than not, you’ll see it establishing constant readership (fanbase? XD), and overall identity. Giving link love will also contribute to popularity, but it will still boil down to the content of the blog posts, how the author(s) set themselves apart from other blogs, inject their own identity and all.
There isn’t much barriers of entry in the blogosphere as much as actual companies, but there would be times in which you’ll have to do some extra effort to get noticed at first XD If you’re well connected to the rest of the blogosphere, the better
It’s more fun that way too ^-^
Depends on the audience which you are trying to achieve. Content, appearance and opinions are what I think are needed. Content to keep the target audience to want to check again and be interested. Appearance to lull them in and actually read the content, cos a bland blog has a feeling of some back water crap and really doesn’t draw in the readers. Opinions so that we can agree or disagree and lets the reader a sense of involvement and participation which makes them want to continue coming back.
Other than that, I like this blog and kinda wish there was an alternative blogger so that junjo romantica could be blogged. oh well keep up the good job and I wonder when the next installment of Impz the loli trap will be up.
To answer your question about age, no, I don’t think age factors into it much. If I’ve learned anything on the internets, it’s that a 14 year old *can* be a hell of a lot more eloquent and concise than some 45 year old “adult.”
(Bit off-topic here but …) I think the real question regarding content should be: what is the motivation behind the blogger? If the motivation is to become popular solely for the sake of being popular, then their content will reflect that. They will post stuff all the time that may or may not be meaningful, some of it bordering on spam. However, if the motivation of the blogger is NOT popularity but rather to reflect their own personalities and/or to drive discussion about real issues, then that type of blog may not be as popular, but the content more likely than not will be better and more thought-provoking.
@Bamboowitch: I am somewhat skeptical to the idea that content is king. Yes, there should be decent quality, a baseline for anyone who is keen to be somewhat popular and garner some feedback from its readers. Yet, without the connections by the big blogs (or endorsement), they will never be able to attract that many blogs. Only when a decent number of blogs linked to it, will they become popular, and it’s auto pilot then.
@dKiwi: That too, that too. I think that the saturation of blogs simply result in a long tail effect, where only a handful of extremely popular blogs control the majority of the visitors. That, by the way, is a part of the dissertation I am working on: The understanding of the scale-free network. Read more on wiki if you are interested ^^
@Usagijen: Ironically, in my research, age is not a factor in understanding traffic flow. I am quite surprised but then it does make sense. Some of the big blogs are generally pioneers. Those benefit from being the first, but any others after them do not gain any time advantage over others at all. Yes, well connectivity is always good!
@Cherubium: Yes, Junjou romantica might be blogged by the yaoi-loving Briar. I will be helping her out for at least 1-2 episodes. Due to her busy schedule (her work sucks), she might not be able to continue. Who knows, I might get my lazy girlfriend to whip out something. You never know …
I do not disagree that content, appearance and everything else plays a part. However, to start the springboard of popularity (or being read at all), you must be linked. That represents a situation that no matter how pretty and nice your blog is, you have to be linked to be noticed. Links are now the economy of blog networks and communities. Darn, I hate it when I am replying while doing my thesis. I sound too serious for my liking x_x!
@nckl: Of course. I still see some adults in some local forums speaking like they are uncouth teenagers with their brains completely washed of any intelligence. You know, I always feel that to start off, you do need to link with others. However, once you get a decent base of visitors, you have to build a personality to move up. It’s really more like your personality pushing popularity, because it reflects through your writing.
Without that, any attempt to try and be popular is a lost cause, because it is mere emptiness. I doubt that I have that big of a personality, but I was told by my girlfriend I have a very gentle touch in my writing (which is sad, since I am a guy). Sigh.
I do wonder how you will decipher between a blog who is just yearning for popularity, or something that is thought provoking. The line is often very fine since blogs in most instances are yearning for some form of feedback or popularity. It’s simply the degree in which the blogger deals with it. (P/s: check your email you used in the above comment ^^)
I think the age of the blog only matters to a few readers, and even then it is just a general categorization into new, not new, and really old. Returning readers who might check out a lot of other blogs might be aware of blog age, but people who stumble on your site through a search engine probably don’t care how old your blog is. Visiters from Google just want your content to match what they were searching for.
I think where the age of your blog might come into play is in the number of regular visitors and comments you get, and in the amount of dorama you can stir up if you want to write something controversial.
@impz: You know what? I just realized I completely missed the boat about what you’re getting it (age of BLOG not BLOGGER). This is rather embarrassing. But I will attempt to re-answer your question: No, age of BLOG does not really matter if the content is good. Sure, more established blogs have more leeway with what they can get away with, but as you said if a n00b has great and fresh new stuff, nobody will really care.
And FYI, from my experience with women (which is zero), they like the “gentle touch.” You’re one lucky man.
In this rapidly globalising world, having connections is inevitable one way or another to get popular. But of course, content is important, so are other factors like the target audience’s likes and dislikes, which very much should determine how newsworthy a blog is – whether the ideas conveyed by the blogs are relevant to the minds of the target audience and if they will like to read them, leading to popularity of the blog.
With good content, sponserships or endorsement by other blogs will definitely be attracted to the blog naturally and make it popular – the key explanation here should be the exposure of the blog in regards to popularity. Hence the more exposure a blog gets will make a blog more popular. But there must be other factors as well.
Age of the blog may just be one of the many factors then. The older it is, the more credible it can be and probably more people reading it? I think age is just one of the factors, but not a driving one.
After all, reputations can be destroyed in a single moment of mistake and people tend to forget how old a blog is, only focusing on what the blog is currently talking about. The blogs must be up to date and that comes back to content being one of the factors.
If there’s no readers reading the blogs, then no matter how fantastic the blog is, it will not get popular. Hence, all in all, I concur that who you are linked to will be very much the main driving force of blog popularity. The more links you have with other sites, a higher chance to let you get more popular.
I don’t think connections per se are too important. They are good to have, but you do fine without. Ani-nouto was an experiment in establishing a blog, and it did quite nicely without any connections. Links from established blogs seem like a big deal, but in reality their impact is mitigated by a couple of factors: 1) the effect is transient, visitors do not stay, and 2) they follow appearances on aggregators, therefore they are just votes post-factum. Animeblogging is heavily rooted in Anime Nano and Antenna, at least presently.
Perhaps this is because I tend to venerate old things, but I have to say age has a certain cachet. When Jeff Lawson says something, people listen. Plus there’re the benefits of a regular readership – though that must also have its disadvantages, I suppose, if a well-established blogger wishes to take his or her blog in a radically different direction.
I will have been doing the anime-blogging for about 18 months, and it’s not popular [I say oh well though, it's more like a journal anyway].
Hence, I don’t think it is the length of existence, as I have less readership than at the beginning. Take the perspective of one who has never read an anime blog and wants to find a regular reading. I think it would be content first (entertainment, noteworthiness, reference), and after time, the person may become an avid reader of anime blogs and would be able to choose ones to their liking. At that point, length of existence may come into play if the reader feels that “the blogger has a solid handle on the material at hand.”
Hope the thesis is going well. Cheers!
@trap: Impz, there is a underline factor associated with the age of the blog: the experience of the bloggers. The longer a blog is active, the more probable a it’s bloggers can generate better quality content and , consequently, attract more readers.
Of course there are exceptions, where a blog starts with a experienced blogger or then the active blogger of a blog changes. There is also the matter of market saturation: older blogs are more popular because they have filled the niche before the new blogs.
Off-Topic: I’ve just noticed now that the pic is Higurashi related…silly Impz, add witty comments to pics!
I believe the way this world wide web is built, linking is but a small factor in becoming well known and having an increasing fan base, it is of utmost importance to have killer content, such that will get people hooked, and click F5 for the waiting post. This killer content will no doubt make the spiders thread their web, and depending on how thrilling the content, the more acceleration in growth/recognition the site will get.
Of course, this is all subjective to the idea of blogs, and a site such as this. And although all the other factors do play a roll in this dungeon of webs, the gossip, the word to word, the “linking” all comes down from opinions and awe from the content.
A simple example is me loving the writers here, so I have started to link this site to my site, and the people who like my site will visit this site, and so on so on, the web just gets bigger and bigger.
@Impz- What I’m trying to say is that some people go on a blog for a particular anime and would read it for its quality of content. Googling the blog is as likely as someone using links from another ‘large’ blog.
If that makes sense…
the blog must be definitely interesting to read about. ^^
In no particular order:
Coverage: We’re talking about anime here, and obviously, what you cover plays a significant part in how popluar your blog is. For example, I’ve watched our “Ranking the Espada” post get commented on over and over for the past 3 weeks. If you’re covering what people are into, you’ll be more popular when compared to another blog that doesn’t cover that topic. (when no other factors are taken into account).
Hard Work: No one gets popular just by being there. You’ve got to put blood, sweat, and tears into your work. Write the content you love to read and people love to read, slave for hours to make the visuals great for your site, ask for feedback on what people want and figure out how to implement it, make the effort to optimize you site for searches, go out and promote your site, etc. I definitely believe that people/blogs that make the hard effort to do everything they can to promote their site and figure out what their audience wants are going to be more popular than someone who has good content, but just assumes people will show up and like it or leave it.
Entertainment/Humor: I think these are key factors for the popularity of anything related to humans. We browse the internet for entertainment, to fill our time (unless we’re doing research or something of that nature). Look at youtube for example, all it does is provide videos, but those videos provide entertainment, and that’s why the site is so popular. TV, movies, books, magazines, etc…you’d read/watch one of those casually over an encyclopedia any day. As for humor, you tell me: would you rather read a blog that gives you the facts on your favorite anime, or one that does the same thing, but is funny?
Reading so many posts on this topic, I would say that content and networking (the number of links you have) are interlinked, speaking from the perspective of a research thesis paper student and the thesis could be “The better the content, the more links you will have leading to higher popularity of the blog”. Of course, the wording of the thesis may be entirely different but the idea should be blatant for all to see…
Seriously, I also think this is a “Chicken and Egg” question of what factor is the driving one among the two – content or number of links it has that contributes to blog popularity.
Anyways, I reiterate my previously mentioned points – “If there’s no readers reading the blogs, then no matter how fantastic the blog is, it will not get popular. Hence, all in all, I concur that who you are linked to will be very much the main driving force of blog popularity. The more links you have with other sites, a higher chance to let you get more popular.” If your blog is linked to many sites, it must mean that it has great content that attracts others to link with it, isn’t it? So the main driving force (primary factor) shld be the links, with content as a secondary factor.
i think the main think is to be able to connect to the mass, which niche blog can do. if you can interact with the mass, eventaully your content is going to be pretty extensive too. besides that, the members will feel more attached as they know each other better.
the bigger more entrenched sites will have more members but the the quality deteoriates( members who will neglected will find another place to join their community). member just go to that site for the service and content, thats all.
then if that site quality lapse for a short priod( inevitable at points of time), members are going to switch to another site cos their relationship with the site is just content. this is slightly different with the niche blogs
I don’t think any of that stuff is important. Blogging isn’t that important, but it is fun. On the real, most people shouldn’t even be blogging right now, but they keep on doing it. Comments, subscriptions, age, and all that stuff won’t define what your own personal goals are.
Blogging and writing are only for a small of group of people. Everybody has an opinion so everyone wants to blog. Great, but most people still live pretty dull lives. They don’t live what they blog about. Big mistake and they won’t last long.
I think in terms of anime blogs, having the newest stuff seems to be popular but only if its written well. There are plenty of people who write about anime but generally don’t do more than state their opinion about the episode. Those that can provide good analysis each week seem to be on the top. On the other hand, other types of blogs benefit from things like longevity or links.
As for me, I’d choose content. In the anime arena, Jeff Lawson is a great example, although he also has longevity to back up his content. If your content is good, the links will come (perhaps that’s the optimistic view). Longevity will probably happen if you enjoy writing your content.
blog age by means of stability among its readers, may perhaps matter… but if they do not get to maintain the interest of their fanbase, they will still go down, even if the contender is just a 6-month old blog.
blogs, websites or other virtual what-nots are like babies that need to be nurtured. this would include adapting to the needs (and wants) of the readers and the proper exposure/endorsements to get you to be known, among other things.
Your own vision for your blog/site will matter, too. If you would want it to be popular, then a certain drive will be there to push for it. If you write just to make a record of your daily thoughts and musings, then there is no need for you to join the popularity contest. There are even some people who don’t want their blogs to be made public. So, for me, it will basically boil down to the intent of the person administrating the blog/site.
People are still getting used to my new “Animated Spree” format at Yukan which was influenced by a non-blogger’s writing (Nick Hornby) and at my home blog I have a number of die hard fans, no matter how small that number is, despite my age only being 18. My blogging originally started out to answer the question of whether Asperger’s people view Anime differently to neurotypicals, and so far I’m halfway to concluding that “Aspies”, at least from my personal experience of blogging Anime, interpret Anime very differently to people like otou-san and Riex do, as well as Impz and IKnight.
My blogging has never really been about age, it’s been about establishing how my condition I was born with defines my identity and how I see the world, as well as the art produced by parts of the world I’m interested in. Even though, reading the With the Light manga, I have learned that the culture that produces manga and anime which I love isn’t the most understanding about people born with my condition or having a condition on the same spectrum.
But it still turns up in Anime. I for one think that even though people think Noe from True Tears is autistic, because my condition is on the same spectrum I’m a lot more sympathetic with someone with a similar deficiency of social skills as me. Say what you like about Noe being crazy, but if you were in a similar boat to her when you were young and coming to terms with a condition you were born with but didn’t yet understand, you would find her a much more relatable character.
That said, I do have epic fails/blunders on occasion, because of my age but also because of my condition affecting how I see the world, and sometimes I end up seeing the world very differently, and sometimes very wrongly. And when I realise I’m interpreting something wrongly I bend over backwards to fix it, desperate to claw back the shreds of dignity I have lost in an indiscretion.
Umm… Presentation and Networking?
Content, Style and blogger personality.
Contacts help in getting a readerbase quickly, and age does help in making people stay.
Though to be honest, I have no idea why people actually read what I write, even though I have no set formula or schedule. Or style even. I just write, and I have a ton of fun doing so. Maybe that’s why people return in my case?
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