Euan analyzed connectivity of science blogs using their blogrolls, revealing a Big Head, a Skinny Neck and a Long Tail, as expected in every community. Linkfests, carnivals, aggregators, commenting on each other's blogs, signing up for ResearchBlogging.org, showing up at meetups and conferences - all of these are methods for people to move from the end of the Long Tail into the neck and head.
Christina did something similar and her lecture on this will be live video streamed on Wednesday (Dec.10th) from 14:15 till 14:45 American Eastern Standard Time (EST).
This also depends on the definition of a "science blog" - I bet that subgroups tend to link to each other, e.g., medical blogs will mostly link to each other, nature blogs, lab-life blogs, women-in-science blogs, skeptical blogs, etc, would all link more within than between each other's niche.
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"depends on the definition..."
The non-science sites that link to me all call me science-oriented; the science sites tend to have me under "weird stuff".
(No, I have not done an actual content analysis--I just happened to notice a few blogs and jumped to this possibly false conclusion.)
Posted by: Cuttlefish | December 5, 2008 1:22 PM
It makes sense, not only are similar blogs interesting, but those are the people that will increase your "work" network. But i think that i have found some blogs that i like mostly because i think the people are funny and think similar...ie...blog friends more than networking possibilities. So i suppose there can be lots of reasons to connect...
Posted by: Rhea Miller | December 5, 2008 1:44 PM
As I commented there, I think the Nature study is flawed in a very significant way: The blog roll is initialy isolated by identifying parts of the web page that do not change when the page is viewed via several different posts. Those of us with the largest blogrolls tend to use rotating blogrolls. That could be a problem with that analysis.
Posted by: Greg Laden | December 6, 2008 2:25 PM
Greg, since this is about actual connectedness it is probably appropriate to de-emphasize those blogwhoring rolls that are so large as to function essentially as noise.
Posted by: Chowder | December 6, 2008 2:57 PM
Gosh, Chowder, how many blogs can one read, enjoy and interact with before one becomes a whore?
Posted by: Stephanie Z | December 6, 2008 5:45 PM
Miss the point much? Large, untended (and unvisited) spammy blogrolls do not contribute meaningfully to the goal Nascent seems to be setting for himself. Have any thoughts on that?
Posted by: Chowder | December 6, 2008 7:33 PM
Chowder ... did you just call me a whore? Hmmm... I'll have to pull your blog off my blog roll.
My blog roll is not spammy and it is not untended. I think it remains true that a methodology that excludes significant data for no good reason is goofy.
Any thoughts on tha..... oh, never mind.
Posted by: Greg Laden | December 6, 2008 9:35 PM
Chowder, I'm on two of the three largest blogrolls at ScienceBlogs. Both of the owners of said rolls visit my blog fairly regularly. They have both commented on and linked to content at my site. That is exactly the kind of behavior that Nascent seems to want to measure.
Your conclusions don't fit the data. Therefore, they're based on something else, like your own assumptions or prejudice. That was the point.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | December 6, 2008 10:22 PM
I came back to follow the discusion, but chowder seems to have clammed up.
Posted by: Greg Laden | December 7, 2008 10:16 AM
Ack- I think that time is wrong, I'm on at 1:30-2 according to the schedule in my hand.
FWIW - I actually pulled the blogroll info basically manually, so if you have a fuller list deeper on your site I probably got it -- depends on what script you use to rotate it otherwise.
Posted by: Christina Pikas | December 10, 2008 8:48 AM