A case in point.
One of the blogs I follow is Read/Write
Web, a very informative blog that keeps its readers informed of significant developments on the Web 2.0 scene.
Recently, Richard MacManus, who posts substantial items to his blog with such frequency that it's easy to get the impression that
he never eats, posted
an item about the source for many of the hits to one of his more popular posts:
I can attest to the power of StumbleUpon - our most popular post over the past
couple of months (according to my Google Analytics service) has been Top 10 Firefox
Web 2.0 Add-ons. Usually our top posts are ones that have had the fortune to be
Slashdotted or dugg. But this one got neither. Instead, 27% of its traffic was
driven by StumbleUpon and 14% by del.icio.us. And the flow from StumbleUpon continues.
I have to admit though that it's one of only a few R/WW posts to have been stumbled
in a big way, so like digg and Slashdot it's not something publishers can expect
on a regular basis.
I doubt that MacManus, were he to realize that readers are interested in a particular
topic that doesn't have much pull on him, would suddenly
change the emphasis of his blog. He delivers a particular bill of goods, and
his readers come to him because he does just that. He could, however, upon learning
that items that get highlighted via StumbleUpon
attract increased readership, attempt to learn what sort of items are most popular
on StumbleUpon and then slightly shift his emphasis to the sort of item
that attracts more attention there. It's my guess that McManus isn't going to
change anything, but will instead continue to deliver the high quality information
he delivers, and simply hope that more and more people are going to take an interest
in just that.
Go to: There are legitimate reasons, or
Go to: Still running it up the flagpole