Where are all the good long tail blogs?
- Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr
I love blogs. I love blogging. Hell, my license plate even says BLOGGER (pretty sure I won’t be able to score than one when I move to Seattle).
My biggest complaint is finding fresh new voices with fresh new ideas. Marketing and Tech blogs have been around just as long as blogging itself. There are no shortage of blogs on these topics. We all read the top blogs. Everyone shares the same links to the same blogs (unless it’s your own).
Where’s the promise of the Long Tail in the blogosphere?
Despite the rise in in the number of tech and marketing blogs it becomes even harder to find original ideas. Most bloggers just mimic and point to the top blogs that we all read. We all do this sometimes and we usually throw in some additional commentary and add our own take on an idea. I just find it that with more people talking we’re all saying the same thing.
I try to not just add to the noise and I know I could be doing a better job.
I have found some good blogs lately by going through my Twitter followers and clicking through to their site. This is very, very time consuming. I wish someone would develop a recommendation engine like Pandora for blogs.
Louis Gray used to does a monthly ‘5 blogs to check out‘ post but he hasn’t done one this year. (see comments for current posts)
Setting up alerts in Google, searches in Twitter and filters in FriendFeed can help find new voices but, again, this is a very manual process.
Ironically I often find new bloggers while writing my blog posts. I use Zemanta and while I’m writing they use semantic data to recommend related posts. It would be great if they had a standalone service where you could enter a blog and find similar posts.
This is only going to become a bigger problem as blogs continue to take over the main stream and more verticals other than tech and marketing are effected (I couldn’t imagine trying to find good mommy blogs).
If anyone knows of such a service please let me know.
If anyone is working on such a service please let me be a beta tester.
Do you have any tips for finding new relevant blogs?
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Tac, I like the approach, but it’s not correct. We have posted five new blogs each month this year as well.
January:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/five-blogs-to-start-off-your-2009-feed.html
February:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/02/februarys-five-voices-spreading-thought.html
March:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/03/march-to-beat-of-five-new-blogs-youre.html
April is coming soon. Not too much time left!
Posted by Louis Gray | 28. Apr, 2009, 6:26 pmLouis,
Sorry about that. I thought you were still doing them but I couldn’t find them on your blog after you quit using the endorsement tag.
Thank you for the correction.
Posted by Tac | 28. Apr, 2009, 6:50 pmIronically, I just posted a blog about long-tail blogging too. My take was a little different because I expect the long tail blogs to come in areas so narrow that there just aren’t that many people who CAN write them credibly, real niche areas but of high value to some. I think the B2B vertical space has/will produce more of them in the future. Tech and marketing are neither narrow or particularly niche. And of course, “long tail” is a relative term. If you’re not a top 100 brand, are you in the long tail? My post: http://tinyurl.com/ddlhbo
Posted by Dana Theus | 28. Apr, 2009, 7:45 pmDana, tottely agree. The further down the tail you go, the more niche the blogs will be. But I tend to believe the ‘best’ blogs are hiding somewhere inbetween. A B-list maybe? They’re not pro bloggers and they don’t post 3-5 times a day, they’re the regular people that have value to add.
Maybe there just aren’t that many of them and you’re right, they’re so niche most of us wouldn’t be interested.
Posted by Tac | 28. Apr, 2009, 8:08 pmIn my experience, people tend to shy away from originality. They tend toward the latest, most popular. It applies to blogging.
Posted by Marcella Glenn | 29. Apr, 2009, 1:22 pmDude, read the last six years of bubblegeneration.com and check out his recent video media, it’ll change ur game
Also, unfollow all the new media douchebags on twitter
Posted by Ethan bauley | 29. Apr, 2009, 9:24 pmHey Tac, I just came across http://boilingpage.com and you might be able to use it for sourcing interesting blogs.
I’ve only been using it for a day and found that you have to change the default sorting in order to view popular webpages.
From what I have gathered, the site uses Twitter and the mention of websites as a way to gather webpages and blogs that are popular.
Good luck in Seattle, we’ll miss you, and try not to develop webbed feet. … Scott
Posted by Scott Prock | 30. Apr, 2009, 11:58 amTac, that’s actually a genuine requirement. I’ve been reading your blogs for a long time and I’ve pondering over other similar blogs, but it’s way too time consuming. But as Scott mentioned in the above comment, http://www.boilingpage.com is a good place to start. It shows the hottest pages on the web and it also has the recommendations part (both personalized and per webpage) that you are looking for. Here are some interesting results from BoilingPage when I searched for ‘technology blogs’:
http://boilingpage.com/index.php?search=technology+blogs
Posted by Dan Sullivan | 30. Apr, 2009, 12:10 pmScott and Dan. That’s great, thanks. I wasn’t aware of BoilingPages.
Posted by Tac | 30. Apr, 2009, 2:09 pmDiscovery of long tail blog posts is one of the goals of my service at http://blern.com. Blern learns what you like based on your own blogging and other activity on the web (Digg, Delicious, etc) then recommends blog posts.
I’m still building the long tail of blogs included in the system, but there’s over 10,000 feeds being parsed already and more coming all the time (it’s a somewhat manual process, as I review each before allowing it into the system as a measure of quality control).
Posted by Jim | 30. Apr, 2009, 2:27 pmJim, that’s great. I’m glad to know there’s some smart people out there working on this. I’ll check out Blern, thanks.
Posted by Tac | 30. Apr, 2009, 2:32 pmHey Tac – they are there. That’s why they’re in the long tail, you have to dig
Posted by Adam Singer | 01. May, 2009, 5:53 amHi, Tac,
There are several reasons: I write long texts, so it's not fast reading. I write on many different subjects, so the blog is tough to categorize. And I only write when I have something to say, so my posts are infrequent. Finally, I haven't tried to market/push it at all, partly as an experiment, to see if and how it would 'bubble up'. [This post is the first time I contradict the previous statement, only because it's relevant to your blog point.]
My blog is definitely way out in the long tail. I only know of one person who has actually read it.
On the plus side, you might find some interesting ideas there. No lunch menus.
I'd love to know what you think. My first blog entry, about Google, follows a similar theme as your current post, but without the punch of your comment: “with more people talking we’re all saying the same thing”. That's good.
Thank you for raising this point.
Reem
http://growthwise.blogspot.com/
Posted by Reem | 12. Jun, 2009, 3:55 amReem, thanks for stopping by. I'm subscribed to your blog now. The topics look right up my alley. Looking forward to future posts.
Posted by tacanderson | 12. Jun, 2009, 5:12 am