Bwahahahahahahahaha.
By: Lowell
Published On: 4/6/2007 11:46:31 AM
Bwahahahahahahahaha. I have nothing else to add about this or about the person who runs it, Dave Mastio!*
*Dave Mastio is a former speechwriter for the Bush administration who has written for right-wing journals like the National Review and The Weekly Standard. That pretty much sums it all up, I'd say.
P.S. There's so much wrong with this BlogNetNews thing, I actually thought it was a joke. Now, I just think it's insane.
P.P.S. Bearing Drift, not surprisingly, loves these new right-wing rankings, asking "could these rankings show that conservative blogs are gaining more influence on the discussion than what we thought." Short answer? No. But I bet you if you put together a liberal version of these right-wing "influence" rankings, you could come up with a list that goes about as follows:
1. NLS
2. RK
3. Vivian Paige
4. VB Dems
5. Waldo Jaquith
6. Bacon's Rebellion
7. Brian Patton
8. 7 West
9. 750 Volts
10. Virginia Progressive
11. Donkey with a Trunk
12. West of Shockoe
13. Bearing Drift
14. Etc.
Boy, isn't this fun?
P.P.P.S. Dave also worked for the Detroit News, USA Today, and the Washington Examiner, which means he's not just a Republican Party functionary. WHich puzzles me even more; why would someone who isn't working for one side or the other do something like this?
Comments
The guy was a speechwriter for Bush (Chris Guy - 4/6/2007 11:56:46 AM)
what can you expect? Next he'll accuse Markos Moultisas Zuniga of selling uranium to Niger.
Don't give him any ideas. (Lowell - 4/6/2007 11:58:08 AM)
Seriously, he might do it!
BNN is using (Eric - 4/6/2007 12:02:31 PM)
a ranking system that they have not disclosed - so I'm not sure that it's a red v blue thing.
Since they're trying to measure influence I suspect the ranking is highly biased on how many other VA blogs link to a given site. If RK posts an article and 10 other blogs refer to it via links from their blogs, those links will boost RK's "influence".
If you want to test that theory write something insanely obnoxious and see what happens to our ranking. #1 for sure. :-)
Snicker... (Eric - 4/6/2007 12:05:44 PM)
Your PPS just boosted Bearing Drift's influence even more...
Of course it's a red vs. blue thing. (Lowell - 4/6/2007 12:10:48 PM)
Did you see the rankings?
1. Red
2. Red
3. Red.
4. Red.
5. Red.
6. Blue
7. Red
8. Purple (Ben is Democratic but his site is bipartisan)
9. Blue
10. Not sure
11. Red
12. Red
13. Red.
14. Purple
15. Red.
16. Blue
17-20. No clue, never heard of them.
Ben tells met that 17-20 are also (Lowell - 4/6/2007 12:21:29 PM)
RED
Surprise, surprise.
Well duh (novamiddleman - 4/6/2007 1:06:55 PM)
The left uses Waldo's aggregator
The right uses blognetnews
Strangely enough I get more hits from Waldo does that mean I am a lefty blog :-p
What are you talking about? (Lowell - 4/6/2007 1:09:39 PM)
Waldo's aggregator is for all blogs, not just lefty ones. This BNN thing pretends to be unbiased, but is wildly pro-right-wing.
It's true they both generally accept anyone (novamiddleman - 4/6/2007 1:26:58 PM)
However,
you remember the dustup with Waldo and Castle right?
Guess when BNN was created... right around that time
Ever since then, in general those that lean left follow Waldo's aggregator more and those that lean right use BNN more
Of course there is leftyblogs, old dominion blogger alliance, the conservative aggregator, etc.
In the end though who cares. I know I am propably number 99 :-p
BNN looks like a concerted attempt (Lowell - 4/6/2007 1:29:48 PM)
to upgrade right-wing blogs and to downgrade Democratic/progressive blogs. I hear that they're planning to take this nationwide. I can't wait to see Daily Kos ranked #5,852,964 in influence, behind about 5 million right-wing blogs. Ha.
More Bwahahahaha (PM - 4/6/2007 12:04:29 PM)
I propose a general Bwahahaha thread today.
Some stories I found high humor in.
Disney Okays Gay Weddings
Why bother with all the theological heat involved with gay marriage? Disney has the answer.
http://www.msnbc.msn...
LOS ANGELES - The Walt Disney Co. has changed its policy to allow same-sex couples to participate in a popular Fairy Tale Wedding program it runs mainly at its two U.S. resorts and cruise line, a Disney spokesman said on Thursday.
Disney previously allowed gay couples to organize their own weddings or commitment ceremonies at rented meeting rooms at the resorts, but had barred them from purchasing its Fairy Tale Wedding package and holding the event at locations at Disneyland and Walt Disney World set aside specifically for weddings.
I am going to suggest this option to all the young couples I know, regardless of orientation, because
The Lavish Wedding Option also includes a ride to the ceremony in the Cinderella coach, costumed trumpeters heralding the couple's arrival, and attendance by Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters dressed in formal attire.
Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") the scientist and atheist, once debated Ted Haggard about evolution versus creationism.
Some wag has re-edited the film and dubbed in Month Python's "dead parrot" sketch, with Dawkins mouthing the words of the aggrieved purchaser of the dead parrot. The end of the film has Haggard singing "I'm a Lumberjack." http://scienceblogs....
Dave Mastio is moving up in the world. (Silence Dogood - 4/6/2007 12:39:28 PM)
Being a speechwriter for Bush is like being an acting coach for a pornographic movie. No one really knows what you're even doing there in the first place, the "talent" you're working with will give a lackluster performance at best, and everyone involved will feel really embarrassed if someone's mother happens to see the end product on tv.
Indeed, it sounds like ranking blogs is as close as Dave Mastio has ever come to a productive and meaningful "real job."
From the way I see it (phriendlyjaime - 4/6/2007 12:56:06 PM)
It's easy to "be the best" if you want to be by simply clicking on your own links through BNN all day long. Some of us just aren't that trite and obsessed with ourselves, I guess, whereas some OTHERS who demand attention all day are. I think we can make some easy guesses as to whom on that list I speak of... ;)
But hey; that might be the vicodin talking...
Exactly (Eric - 4/6/2007 1:01:53 PM)
No doubt another part of the formula is BNN clicks. It may be somewhat biased toward red blogs, but just like google searches you can game the system if you just uncover how it works.
Rankings like this are fun but certainly not to be taken seriously.
Somewhat biased? (Lowell - 4/6/2007 1:10:57 PM)
Hey Eric, can I share whatever you're smoking today? Ha.
Speaking of useless statistics (Eric - 4/6/2007 1:21:13 PM)
If it'll make you feel any better ;-), I dug around alexa for some rankings. Turns out most of the BNN top influencing blogs have no data - feel free to draw your own conclusions.
As for a few I found (I got bored after a while)
RK 282,559 (1 week) 775,644 (3 month)
NLS 1,105,753 (1 week) 712,647 (3 month)
BearingDrift 1,784,059 (1 week) 3,247,170 (3 month)
I'm just happy to be on the list! (elevandoski - 4/6/2007 1:10:38 PM)
I like RK's list better. But I have to admit when I got the release yesterday from BNN, all I could think was "Whew! We are on the list!" It's crazy for VB Dems for instance to be only one notch below NLS. NLS is probably the most linked blog in VA and he gets like over 10X the daily hits that we do. I wanted to attribute some of VB Dems success however to Beachmom and her extraordinary writing. She crossposts a lot of her stuff that she orginally writes for DailyKOS, MyDD, et al. When her posts at these national blogs get front-paged, our hit meter goes bonkers. I would imagine the same thing is happening to RK (assuming he links back here), so these BNN rankings totally don't make any sense. Then I looked back at our VB Dems posts for that BNN week in question (March 24 through March 31) and Beachmom made no posts that week, so there goes that theory. GOPpers and/or the ODBA have no national blogs on any influence so I'll wager BNN isn't including that as a measurement as well they should, IMHO.
Waldo's not on the BNN list (Lowell - 4/6/2007 1:11:53 PM)
Neither is 750 Volts or Virginia Progressive (which, ironically, uses BNN).
For those of us who don't blog (Glant - 4/6/2007 1:51:34 PM)
can you explain what this is all about?
Here's how they describe themselves (Lowell - 4/6/2007 2:02:14 PM)
You've seen aggregators before. BlogNetNews jumps a generation ahead. We're not interested in reprinting your posts and we don't have an ideological ax to grind.
Yeah, right, "we don't have an ideological ax to grind." Liars. A "generation ahead?" Of what, the stone age?
For more, see here. It's crazy shit.
It's all about ego stroking (novamiddleman - 4/6/2007 2:00:53 PM)
basically whose blog is most "popular"
can you say high school all over again
no more drama please :-p
No, it's all about the right-wing noise machine (Lowell - 4/6/2007 2:04:07 PM)
Nice try, though.
I know (phriendlyjaime - 4/6/2007 2:04:20 PM)
I feel like I am going to get judged on my shoes or clothing style.
Oh wait, I do. See NLS. ;)
Amusing (norman swingvoter - 4/6/2007 4:05:24 PM)
I clicked over. Couldn't help but stumble across the gibberish below. Basically I guess we are supposed to believe them on trust. I've noticed conservative and neonut leaders always seem to be saying you should trust them, you should submit to them, etc. Too many gullible people do, even when they start passing out the koolaid.
"BNN's methodology takes into account the fact that all Internet data is profoundly limited in its reliability by using multiple data sets that, when combined, reveal a fair picture of activity in the blogosphere."
If they rated newspapers... (Lowell - 4/6/2007 4:10:53 PM)
...the Arlington Sun-Gazette right-wing rag, read by a few thousand people, would undoubtedly come out as more influential than the Washington Post or New York Times, read by hundreds of thousands or even millions. According to their brilliant "algorithm," of course. Hahaha.
The Definition of Influence (Kindler - 4/6/2007 11:43:44 PM)
Let's see, RK was founded to help Tim Kaine beat Jerry Kilgore -- which he did. Then RK focused on the impossible dream of Jim Webb beating George Allen -- which came true.
So what's the most influential blog in Virginia? Look at the facts on the ground and it's pretty obvious...
Graph of blog visits (Lowell - 4/7/2007 10:23:17 AM)
Thanks for posting this chart (Kathy Gerber - 4/7/2007 11:17:36 AM)
That's absurd what they are claiming.