Thursday, September 30, 2010

HUGE RUINED PILE and GROGNARDIA Tie For Hottest Blog

I've been hoping that my recent blogometrics exercises would be useful for highlighting excellent blogs that readers may have previously missed. A problem with ranking blogs by raw follower number, however, is that long-lived blogs have an unfair advantage because they've had more time to accumulate readers. Newer blogs, however great they may be, are left in the dust in this regard.

Here I sought to correct for this longevity bias by reporting the number of followers GAINED over the last 19 days. This is a fairer analysis because it reflects the RATE at which readers are being added over an equal time span in the current blogosphere. With 240+ old school RPG blogs currently online there is a lot of competition for readers' attention. I think rate-of-follower-accumulation is probably the best indicator of how hot a blog is (at least the best I can do with publicly available data).

Congratulations to Scott (HUGE RUINED PILE) and James (GROGNARDIA) for a tie at the top of the list with 28 followers gained! No surprise here, these are both spectacularly great blogs. I am sure you all read GROGNARDIA, but if you haven't checked out HRP go there immediately - it is purely awesome in terms of both quality and quantity of creative output!

I am shocked and flabbergasted that Cyclopeatron made second place! I feel like this is the fluffiest blog in town! Well, I'll enjoy it while it lasts... Thanks everyone!
Before showing the whole list, I want to be clear about the problems with my analysis:

1. I can only retrieve follower numbers for blogger.com blogs. Therefore, blogs using Wordpress or other platforms are not included in the analysis.

2. This list only includes 60 out of the 240 blogs I am aware of. Therefore a lot of great blogs are sadly missing. The reason for this is that my Sept 11 data only include blogs from this list of blogs with 50+ followers. I am now keeping a better spreadsheet of historical data, so for my next comparison I should have 220+ blogs included. Please accept my apologies if your blog is not on the list - if it is listed here it will be in the next comparison!



Followers
Followers
Follower
Rank
Blog
11-Sep
30-Sep
Gain
1
GROGNARDIA
628
656
28
1
HUGE RUINED PILE
53
81
28
2
Cyclopeatron
96
123
27
3
Playing D&D With Porn Stars
504
522
18
4
Jeffs Gameblog
366
380
14
5
LotFP: RPG
250
263
13
6
A Paladin In Citadel
164
176
12
6
From the Sorcerer's Skull
73
85
12
7
Destination Unknown
81
92
11
8
Sickly Purple Death Ray
57
67
10
9
B/X BLACKRAZOR
161
170
9
9
Akratic Wizardry
106
115
9
10
The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
178
186
8
10
Dungeons and Digressions
158
166
8
10
The Underdark Gazette
145
153
8
10
Risus Monkey
52
60
8
11
Beyond the Black Gate
221
228
7
11
Telecanter's Receding Rules
92
99
7
11
The Other Side blog
79
86
7
11
Dungeonmum
70
77
7
11
THE LAND OF NOD
69
76
7
12
Bat in the Attic
146
152
6
12
Trollsmyth
143
149
6
12
Greyhawk Grognard
141
147
6
12
Ode to Black Dougal
117
123
6
12
Green Skeleton Gaming Guild
75
81
6
13
Tankards & Broadswords
112
117
5
13
Daddy Grognard
96
101
5
13
The Warlock's Home Brew
83
88
5
13
Delta's D&D Hotspot
73
78
5
13
Axe & Hammer
64
69
5
13
Weird Worlds of Geoffrey McKinney
52
57
5
14
ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog
218
222
4
14
Swords Against the Outer Dark
126
130
4
14
How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less
109
113
4
14
PLANET ALGOL
90
94
4
14
"It's okay; Gary sent us."
72
76
4
14
Aeons & Augauries
59
63
4
15
Monsters and Manuals
173
176
3
15
The Hopeless Gamer
152
155
3
15
Gothridge Manor
88
91
3
15
Havards Blackmoor Blog
79
82
3
15
Dungeonskull Mountain
62
65
3
15
Warning - Mutagenic Substance
58
61
3
15
Dungeon Mistress
55
58
3
16
Lord of the Green Dragons
212
214
2
16
The Grand Tapestry
118
120
2
16
TEMPLE OF DEMOGORGON
109
111
2
16
OEF
105
107
2
16
Sham's Grog 'n Blog
99
101
2
16
Joethelawyer's Wondrous Imaginings
93
95
2
16
Uhluht'c Awakens
74
76
2
16
Vaults of Nagoh
61
63
2
17
The Savage AfterWorld
91
92
1
17
Save Vs. Poison
70
71
1
17
Bite The Bulette
50
51
1
18
Troll and Flame
70
70
0
18
Grimmhaus
62
62
0

10 comments:

  1. Woah - I'm actually on the list!

    Apparently, foolishly declaring you're in the process of writing a new and somewhat niche RPG can earn you 5 extra followers.

    Glad I wasn't on the list of "top blogs in terms of people who got bored and stopped following".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the kind words about the Pile blog. I've noticed my increased traffic and number of followers over the last few weeks and find both a bit startling.

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  3. Thanks for the pointers to blogs I haven't checked out, and the analysis work :D

    Allan.

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  4. Now that's an interesting list! I recognize quite a few blogs that I just started following in this period.

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  5. So are you going to make this a regular feature, a 'top of the pops'? Thanks, this stuff is always interesting!

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  6. @Scott - Your blog is like a firehose of straight up old school D&D excellence! Keep it up, please!

    @Risus - If I may be so presumptuous, I wonder how much my blog listing activities have influenced these numbers, if at all. Several bloggers mentioned surges in readership after I started posting lists. A little Heisenbergian dilemma, maybe...

    @Dungeonmum - Maybe so... I went ahead and preserved the historical information in a spreadsheet so I have an easier way of tracking stuff now. So maybe in a month or so I'll make a similar "hot list".

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  7. It looks like there are 6 more people following the blog since this post went up, so I suspect you have quite a bit to do with my increased numbers, at least. :)

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  8. I have noticed a definite increase in readership since your original post. But it is (coincidentally) around the same time that I made a bunch of old-school posts, and those posts always seem to attract more eyeballs. That, and "sex moves" in Apocalypse World. ;)

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  9. When I had my own blog, I had a faithful following of four. The pressure of their imagined comments and thoughts about my blog became so great that I had to shut it down, and be sectioned.

    (okay, most of that was a lie, but I've only spoken to my soup bowl today, and frankly, he had nothing to say for himself).

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  10. I don't have a lot of followers and I wonder if I am doing something wrong.

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