# Weblogs and Authority

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-05-25T15:37:01Z


OverstatedWeblogs and Authority

This week I'll be presenting a paper at the International Communication Association Conference in New Orleans titled Audience, Structure and Authority in the Weblog Community. The paper is an analysis of two different metrics for measuring authority within weblogs:

    * Blogroll: A link from one weblog to the top-level of another, (e.g., links to http://overstated.net, http://www.overstated.net or http://overstated.net/index.asp). I assume this is a proxy to popularity.
    * Permalink: Any link from one weblog to deep content on another (e.g. a link to http://overstated.net/04/05/24-weblogs-and-authority.asp). I assume this is a proxy to influence.

The following table shows the top 20 for each measure. One observation is that many of the top ranked sites are community weblogs (e.g. Slashdot or Memepool). These sites play the important role of hubs, maintaining ties to more weblogs than a single person would be able to. They allow information to diffuse quickly between distant parts of the network of readership.






 
Blogroll Degree RankPermalink Degree Rank
linksurllinksurl

1.2581metafilter.com1322boingboing.net

2.2434slashdot.org1270diveintomark.org
3.2146boingboing.net1096metafilter.com
4.1825kottke.org1073slashdot.org

5.1604instapundit.com982kottke.org
6.1527scripting.com976weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor
7.1307evhead.com956instapundit.com

8.1220andrewsullivan.com828andrewsullivan.com
9.1062memepool.com827themorningnews.org
10.1007doc.weblogs.com826rathergood.com

11.977megnut.com819textism.com
12.961littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog683denbeste.nu
13.899diveintomark.org626doc.weblogs.com

14.880littleyellowdifferent.com625asmallvictory.net
15.848textism.com582rightwingnews.com
16.846rebeccablood.net577microcontentnews.com

17.758plasticbag.org568joi.ito.com
18.737dashes.com/anil560buzzmachine.com
19.719ftrain.com553waxy.org

20.714plastic.com522a.wholelottanothing.org

A second observation is that the lists are fairly distinct. While some webloggers hold top positions in both ranks, the list diverges considerably as the position increases. While Blogrolls tend to support the weblog elders (scripting.com, evhead.com, etc.), permalinks suggest a different set of authors as influencers (joi.ito.com, buzzmachine.com, etc.). Looking at the differential between the ranks in the figure below, it is apparent that as soon as the rank passes 100, the correlation between Blogroll and Permalink rank becomes less defined.Interesting paper which has an impact on the power-law discussion. The chart shows that I'm not popular, but I have influence, whereas Anil may be popular, but doesn't have influence. ;-)





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