Popularity vs. Authority

Posted on February 16, 2006 by Jim Walton

Check out this post by Stephanie Boothe titled Power Laws, Popularity, Authority, A-Lists and the Rest….

She makes some great points, here’s a brief sample:

Popular? Visited, linked, or some combination thereof. People hear about it, talk about it, go and see it. That’s popular. Popularity is pretty close to things you can measure, like how many visitors a site has (that’s the numbers you see in news articles), or how many incoming links it has (that’s what Technorati tracks).

But is that what we really want? People who blog clearly want recognition of some sort (otherwise, we wouldn’t take the trouble of writing in a public space), but is recognition in numbers really what we’re after?

I have already been thinking lately about why I do this and where I’m going with this blog.  Stephanie’s post has added a new element in my thinking as I consider why I blog.  Do I blog for influence?  popularity?  authority?  fame? 

What do you think? 

To be continued….

Popularity: 9% [?]

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Comments

2 Responses to “Popularity vs. Authority”

  1. Sound Doctrine on February 17th, 2006 7:50 am

    I do it for the worldy riches. Oh wait I don’t get anything.

    Seriously I blog to learn and grow and maybe help others that may be going through the same things I am.

    Of course I do find myself checking to see if anyone is actually reading this thing or not. They are soe I will keep on blogging.

    Thanks for making me think.

  2. Church Tech Matters » Blog Archive » Passion Leads To Stories on February 17th, 2006 3:05 pm

    [...] This ties in nicely with my posts from yesterday, Popularity vs. Authority and Bouncing Up The List, Thanks To brrreeeport. [...]