Hitwise: Journalists’ attention is only one cause of blogs’ traffic increases
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 24 August 2006 at 13:38
Tags: Blogs, Journalism, Reuters, Sunday Times
Attention from mainstream media is only sometimes the major cause of increased traffic to a blog, according Hitwise UK director of research Heather Hopkins.
Today Hitwise released some of the traffic data for the week ending 19 August, which Hopkins referred to in her case studies earlier this week.
Three of the blogs posting major week-on-week gains in that week were involved in stories that garnered significant national media attention:
- Girl with a One-Track Mind, an erotic blog which has been made into a book, drew extensive media attention after the Sunday Times unmasked its pseudonymous author as Zoe Margolis, a film assistant from north London. he increased attention lead to an eight-fold increase in visits to the blog in the past two weeks, making it the second most-popular UK blog being tracked by Hitwise.
- Little Green Footballs, the US-based blog that exposed Reuters freelance Adnan Hajj’s manipulated photographs from Beirut, saw its market share of visits in the UK increase 88 per cent week-on-week.
- EU Referendum blogger Richard North, who posted a critique of photographs taken at Qana in Lebanon, also saw an increase in traffic, becoming the 10th most-visited site among UK blogs being tracked by Hitwise. Journalists have strongly disputed North’s allegations.
However, the most popular UK blog being tracked by Hitwise, Fugufish, appears to have drawn most of its majority of the visits to the site from e-mail services, online communities and chat services
Fugufish rose to fame after posting several viral videos, including one of the band OK Go and one of David Bowie in the film The Labyrinth.
In a statement today, Hopkins said: “Whilst the mainstream media can be an important catalyst for growth, links from other blogs, email and social networking sites can also drive growth. This reflects the community around blogging and a maturing of the medium that now can create its own celebrities.”
Tags: Blogs, Journalism, Reuters, Sunday Times
