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