TOP 50 SALON BLOGS OF THE MONTH

Posted on May 6, 2003 by Dave Pollard
salon Rankings are based on number of hits between April 5 and May 5 (ranking in previous month in brackets). Shirky’s Power Law continues to hold, as the top 75 blogs received an aggregate 750,000 hits each month, but the cutoff for the ‘top 25’ and ‘top 50’ lists dropped from 3,500 and 1,700 hits last month to 3,000 and 1,500 hits this month, a second straight decline. Name and location of each blog’s ‘owner’, when known, is shown below the blog name. The Salon blog # links to the blog’s home page. Apologies in advance for any errors or omissions. Corrections gratefully accepted.

 1. filchyboy chronotope (2)
Christopher Filkins 1512 		26. Toby’s Political Diary (19)
Toby Sackton 1282 Massachusetts
 2. the reverse cowgirl’s blog (1)
Susannah Breslin 1437 		27. The Agora (11)
Douglas Anders 1147 Ohio
 3.  The Julie/Julia Project (4)
Julie Powell 1399 New York 		28. Pipeline (36)
Doug Hennessee 1739 Minnesota
 4.  Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment (3)
Scott Rosenberg 0014 California 		29. Playing with my food… (24)
Paul Hinrichs 1444 North Carolina
5. filchyboy john the maiden (5)
Christopher Filkins 1021 		30. She’s Actual Size (29)
Kat Donohue 1068 California
 6.  Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You (22)
Julia Deckham Grey 2153 		31. Fried Green al-Qaedas (27)
Mark Hoback 1424
 7. Real Live Preacher (6)
Anonymous 1772 		32. Blog Baby (-)
Marie Foster 2237 Washington
8. The Raven (9)
Anonymous 1381 Florida 		33. David Harris’ Science and Literature (41)
David Harris 1092 Maryland
 9.  Secular Blasphemy (7)
Jan Haugland 1561 Norge 		34. Sexy Mothers Do Exist (34)
Michelle McBride 1917
10.  A blog doesn’t need a clever name (14)
Bruce Umbaugh 1004 Missouri 		35. Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen (28)
LL Adams 1754 New York
11.  Tales of Drudgery and Boredom (10)
Michel Vuijlsteke 1236 Belgie 		36. FarrFeed (39)
John Farr 1107 New Mexico
12.  Radio Free Blogistan (12)
Christian Crumlish 1111 California 		37. Driver 8 (37)
Charly Z 1118
13.  How to Save the World (17)
Dave Pollard 2007 Ontario 		38. Tehran Washington, DC 1970-1973… (38)
Kathy Talley-Jones 1301 Washington DC
14.  The Devil’s Excrement (8)
Miguel Octavio 1330 Venezuela 		39. explodedlibrary.info (50)
Morgan Wilson 1429 Minnesota
15.  Pornographer’s Picks (15)
(Inactive since October ) 		40. The Monster Limo Weblog (29)
Marc Hatfield 1956 New York
16.  WIFLblog (13)
Ted Ritzer 1455 British Columbia 		41. Everything That Sucks (47)
Amanda 1691 Florida no more
17.  My so called lesbian life (21)
Penny 1883 Florida 		42. neva, miss feva, blogging (39)
Neva Cavataio 1216 Oregon
18. Hyperbole (16)
Jim Haefele 1703 Tunisia 		43. Reflections (-)
Daniel Dolinov 1476 New York
19.  different strings (20)
Kriselda Jarnsaxa 1542 Kansas 		44. Emphasis Added (32)
Rob Salkowitz 1454
20.  Rayne Today (18)
Anonymous 1549 Michigan 		45. Life on Earth (43)
Giles Boutel 1237
21.  readme.blog (45)
Chris 1075 New York 		46. Stuff from Wozz (31)
Matt Cable 1019 Colorado
22.  Pesky the Rat (23)
Susan McNerney 1293 California 		47. Gnosis (42)
Morgan Sandquist 1081 New York
23.  STANDING ROOM ONLY (26)
Hugh Elliott 1573 California 		48. Maxine ‘s Radio Weblog (43)
Maxine Locker 1314
24.  Second p0st (30)
Phillip Pearson 0002 New Zealand 		49. Le Prêtre Noir (35)
Father Bojangles 1823
25.  No Code (46)
David Fox 1196 Ohio 		50. The Barbaric Yawp (48)
Christopher Key 1811 Washington

This entry was posted in Using Weblogs and Technology. Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to TOP 50 SALON BLOGS OF THE MONTH

  1. Charly Z says:
    May 6, 2003 at 07:31

    Kinda depressing, when I had already gotten over obsessing about my place in the pecking order, finding my place in the pecking order.Oh, well…

  2. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 07:45

    Charly: See my follow-up post, where you show up much higher. And weren’t you the guy who gave me the ‘promote your blog’ advice? ;-)

  3. Charly Z says:
    May 6, 2003 at 07:59

    I guess so; boy, I miss that guy!

  4. Real Live Preacher says:
    May 6, 2003 at 08:21

    Dave, I found your article (Shirkey’s power law) fascinating. The principles behind it are helpful tools for understanding a lot of life. My middle school daughter asked me why some kids are popular. She probably won’t be able to use your article, but the principles apply and I’m thinking of distilling them for her.Will Durant noted that freedom always leads to inequality, which leads to disatisfaction, which leads to some kind of revolution. Attempts to redistribute are always dismal failures leading to poor quality and spectacular abuses, but the system does get rebooted, only to begin again.I for one was rather surprised when Real Live Preacher became somewhat popular. I was not a blog insider when I launched. By this I mean that I didn’t read blogs and didn’t understand anything about what a person should do to become well read.I atribute the popularity of RLP to luck and lucky timing combined with reasonable writing skills, a weird title, and a subject matter that is less common.The point is, writing talent is important, but timing and luck and other intangibles are big factors. Humility seems in order, does it not?Thanks.

  5. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 08:43

    I don’t know RLP: Take a look at my follow-up post above and you’ll find it hard to be humble. You’ve obviously got a lot more than a weird title going for you. I’m about to do a post about Electric Venom’s ‘blogging metaphysics’: her answer is that success is all about having something to say, and the way you say it. By that measure, we should all be studying your blog.

  6. Susan says:
    May 6, 2003 at 11:56

    I’m quite surprised at my placement–I rarely break the top 30, at least as far as I know! a lot of my hits go to pages outside of Radio, so my traffic generally doesn’t show up on the Salon page very well. In addition, I’m setting up several new sections of my site that will not be in Radio, and plan to move further in that direction in the future. Radio just doesn’t do everything I want.

  7. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 16:19

    Sorry to hear that, Susan. What’s missing, most crucially, to make you leave Radio? If we buy lots of Pesky merchandise, is there any chance you can leave a Salon mirror so we can still consider you a Slogger? As for your ranking, you’re consistent, where others spike and drop off, which accounts for your higher ranking over a month.

  8. Marie Foster says:
    May 7, 2003 at 13:51

    I am curious about what Susan is up to as well. I love her site. Her humor has infected me more than once. I have this recurring nightmare about a whole flock of Donald Trumps moving down the street in lock step to avoid Ivana knocking him off.

  9. Susan says:
    May 7, 2003 at 16:28

    I’m not leaving radio or salon–I still plan to use it for the core function of the site (the day to day posting). But I plan to create character-specific subsections(Janet the Snake’s lair and Robertson the Seagull’s Ministry, for starters). Each of those sections will have a whole look and feel to itself, and contain additional permanent features, none of which will be in Radio. I then plan to redesign the home page to more resemble a news magazine, as I think the current more bloggish format is awkward for new readers. This would be a lot easier if I could plug in include files for the different sections of the page. There’s got to be a way to do that in Radio, but I don’t know how.In other words, though Pesky will continue to post daily, have permalinks and comments, and retain the basic features of a blog, he won’t look so much like a blog. Now if I could just get all these little critters to actually help with the maintenance, I’d be set :)

Comments are closed.