A recent study conducted over the last 30 days of Digg News submissions shows the amount and kind of attention each 2008 hopeful is receiving. You can see as the author points out, a clear organized burying of Ron Paul submissions, due to allegations that supporters of Ron Paul are spamming Digg.

It should be expected that 2008 hopefuls will keep a close eye on their support in social media sites like Digg and YouTube, as such sites can be great measures of their popularity and the popularity of their positions, especially among the younger voting population. However it should be noted, both by supporters and the candidates themselves, that using Digg to push themselves in an unfairly positive manner will get noticed and cause an adverse affect on their popularity among the community, which is proving to have a greater influence as a news medium as time goes on (the contrary holds true as well).

Looking at the number of submissions each 2008 hopefuls have received in the last 30 days, you’ll notice that it highly correlates with both name recognition and the amount each is covered in the press.

The list below is in ascending order according to number of stories submitted.

Here’s a link to the original published source.

Originally posted on February 26, 2007 @ 9:14 pm

Martin Neumann makes a very good point today at The Blog Columnist in relation to a discussion pertaining to how many blogs about blogs is too many:

I say, respectfully: let the market decide.

Although I was a little negative in my post the other day about the difficulty in becoming a professional blogger, none of that was to say that reaching that level was impossible, indeed it can be done, it just takes a lot of tenacity and drive to get there, and likewise blogs about blogs face the same hurdles, it is after all a fairly small niche for which there are only a finite number of readers.

It took me a very long time to build my previous blog about blogging, indeed it took a couple of years until traffic and revenue got to a reasonably good level. But during that time competitors were launched…and shuttered, where as I took my queue from the Energizer Bunny, regular, dependable and just kept going. Today it still is a small niche, but where as the potential audience has continued to grow, the competition really hasn’t. Compare and contrast personal blogs about tech and servers to blogs about blogs, there’s thousands of tech blogs in that niche, but there are no more dedicated blogs about blogs (in general) than I can count on my fingers. 901am isn’t one of these sites, although it may have some blogging stuff, it’s more of a hybrid Web 2.0/ Blogging/ interesting techy stuff blog. If I wasn’t writing here and making good money elsewhere would I enter the blog on blogs market again! hell yes! it’s an under catered niche. But I digress, because at the end of the day, the market is big enough for multiple blogs on blogs, as it is for multiple blogs on Lindsay Lohan or Search Engines. Some of course will always do better than others, that’s the nature of the best that is a free and open market, but most importantly of all: the market will decide.

Please visit 901am again, shortly :-)

Originally posted on February 21, 2007 @ 7:46 pm

I wrote yesterday about the sorry tale of the now Yahoo! owned MyBlogLog banning Jeremy Schoemaker following Jeremy’s exposure of serious security issues with the service, but from from Jeremy today: MyBlogLog Tracks Your Visitors Ad Clicks.

Shortform: MyBlogLog is not only tracking visits from other MyBlogLog members to your site (if you’re using the service) they are also tracking clicks on your ads, INCLUDING Adsense ads.

I can’t speak for other users, but certainly when I signed up for the service I don’t remember anything being clearly mentioned about MyBlogLog spying on the ad clicks on my site.

Certainly, other 3rd party trackers do track this sort of behavior. I use Adlogger on a number of sites to track my clicks and to protect against click fraud, but notably I choose to do so and I run my own copy locally so that only I have control over the data it gathers. Services such as Alexa, Google Toolbar (both of which I use via the searchstatus plugin) and Compete send data on my surfing habits back to their respective companies, but they send MY data back, not the data of visitors to my sites, and I OPT IN TO those services, knowing to well the implications of doing so. MyBlogLog on the other hand is spying on my visitors (which I accept) but also their activity on each site (ad clicks), which I don’t accept. Notably I’ve also read recently (don’t have the link at hand) that prior to Yahoo’s acquisition of the company, MyBlogLog were trying to shop these stats to the highest bidder, so privacy of the data is questionable as well.

Are you using Adsense and MyBlogLog together? Remember the rule about not being able to disclose the CTR rates to third parties? MyBlogLog is gathering this exact data on your site if you’re using the service. Using Adsense with MyBlogLog could get you banned from Adsense!

As of 5 minutes ago I’ve removed MyBlogLog from my own personal blog. My Adsense account is too valuable to risk, and I’m outraged that MyBlogLog was stealing this data from my site. If you haven’t done so yet, I’d encourage everyone using the service to take it down immediately. For all it’s benefits (it’s still a fun idea) the risks far outweigh the benefits.

Tags: Yahoo, MyBlogLog

Originally posted on February 23, 2007 @ 5:06 pm