Techmeme: Where the A-Listers Party With the Long Tail.

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One of the favorite bitchmeme’s on Techmeme, the popular blog and news headline site that keeps track of the most talked-about tech stories on the Web, is that it is dominated by A-list blogs and news sites with full-time writing staffs. Because of this professionalization of the blogosphere, the argument goes, lone bloggers are being pushed out of the conversation. TechCrunch is sometimes carted out as Exhibit A in this argument, which is why I was glad to see the chart above from the StatBot. It shows the distribution of headlines on Techmeme by rank on the Techmeme Leaderboard.

techmeme-lb-small.pngWhile about a 30 percent of the headlines are hogged by the top ten sources on the Techmeme Leaderboard (see table at left), another full third come from blogs and sites that don’t even rank in the top 100. That means that if you have something interesting to say, it doesn’t matter who you are, other blogs will find you and link to you. Right now that would include the post on Statbot, which is written by a self described “17-year-old wannabe geek from India” named Yuvi. Welcome to the conversation, Yuvi. A sure-fire way to get on Techmeme is to . . . write about Techmeme. But there are plenty of other ways to get there as well.

Personally, I think the distribution shown in the graph is what makes Techmeme so compelling. It always includes a pretty steady list of trusted sources, but mixed in with those are plenty of wild cards who can, in turn, become dominant voices in their own right. That’s how I like my news: a third from relatively well-known sources, a third from sources that are a complete surprise, and the rest to be from somewhere in between.

See the top individual bloggers by the TechMeme Leaderboard as well.