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A Reflection on Kathy Gill's Work

Submitted by Drunk Like Socrates on Tue, 2005-09-13 17:55.

I read the paper by Kathy Gill, called "How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?" (You can find it here.) I didn't find Gill's work as compelling as I had hoped it would be. In "measuring" the influence of the blogosphere, she uses both quantitative and qualitative analyses, which I thought was good. The problem I had with her paper was that, after stating in her title "How can we measure," she only covers how we DO measure. I thought she would present a new way to show how we can measure the influence of the blogosphere. Because of her title, I expected her to. It was kind of disappointing.

However, she did make some good points which made me reflect. Gill states that blogging can empower a new group of writers. WE, the WOI bloggers, are a new group of writers. I definitely feel empowered. Prior to this, I had a xanga (like an online diary), which i got bored of extremely quickly. But now on WOI, I actually try to post something meaningful, something I want to talk about, not just generic ramblings about my day.

Another good point that Gill makes is that the current method of mathematically determining which blogs are the most influential needs to be revamped. Naturally, we cannot see how a blog is influential without going beyond numbers, but the current system of counting links and the number of hits falls short of seeing influence in the mathematical perspective.

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New Writers

Submitted by Judge Hatchet on Tue, 2005-09-13 18:12.

I agree with your comment, or rather the comment by Kathy Gill, that blogging allows a whole new group of writers to voice their opinions. A lot of people in this country, and around the world for that matter have strong opinions. Although there have been ways like letters to the editor in newspapers that have allowed people to get their opinions out there, the internet is a convenient, and in most cases, annonymous way to let others know what you are thinking. Many people would never think of writing a letter to the editor and don't have jobs that allow them to just say what they are feeling like newspaper writers, so I feel blogging has opened up a wonderful avenue for both opinionated people to say what they feel and for their audience to gleen valuable information.

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I feel you

Submitted by Misty Jean on Tue, 2005-09-13 19:38.

I had a livejournal previous to this blog (similar to a xanga ), and I definitely know what you mean about now having more purpose to the writing. As opposed to my livejournal where I would just write whatever, not really thinking about the people reading it, with WOI I feel like my writing really has the opportunity to "influence" other people, which makes me want to write about topics that hold more value. It's nice to see I'm not the only one with that perspective.

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Also...

Submitted by Whimsical Monkey on Fri, 2005-09-30 12:48.

Also see G33K's discussion on the size of the blogosphere.

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A word in defense ;-)

Submitted by Kathy (not verified) on Tue, 2005-10-11 05:12.

Hello, DLS ... first, let me say it was a shock to see someone from my old stomping grounds (greater Philly) talking about that paper.

Recall that the paper was presented in May 2004. That was a year and a half ago! The blogosphere is growing, and changing, almost as fast as the Web was in the mid-90s. Also, the measurement services were all new then. (Hard to believe, isn't it?)

What I had hoped to do in that short paper was raise questions about gross metrics as measures of influence. Compounding the analytical challenge, we haven't yet, imo, separated the technology (blogging software) from the product (a blog) ... however we are beginning to acknowledge genres. There are some blogs that cross genre (Scripting News comes to mind) but most are niche players. So influence within a genre is independent of those mega-metrics (upteen thousand blogroll listings) from Technorati et al.

Thanks for the comments. :)

May I ask, how did you stumble upon the paper?

Earlier this year, I examined RSS adoption in online newspapers. Not the same network, but a network none-the-less.

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Great feedback

Submitted by Tech Goddess on Tue, 2005-10-11 14:48.

Kathy, thanks for commenting. We (the teachers) assigned the article for the students to read. We're exploring all kinds of aspects of blogging, but we've been talking about how blog popularity is measured and the problems with current ranking systems. Your paper, I thought, was a good introduction to a lot of those issues. I found the paper, by the way, through one of the many blog bibliographies that are out there on the web.

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