{"id":3836,"date":"2003-10-04T22:11:54","date_gmt":"2003-10-05T02:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2003\/10\/04\/does-the-blogosphere-exist-ex"},"modified":"2011-08-05T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T19:00:37","slug":"does-the-blogosphere-exist-expanded-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/10\/04\/does-the-blogosphere-exist-expanded-version\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the Blogosphere Exist? [expanded version]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a313'><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\"><br \/>\n<P><FONT color=\"red\"><STRONG>Afterthought &#8212; Phantom Page Hits?&nbsp;<\/STRONG>(Nov. 25, 2003)<STRONG>: <\/STRONG><\/FONT><FONT color=\"black\">Here are excerpts from an e-mail sent by the Editor to several eminent webloggers on Nov. 24, 2003:<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT size=\"2\"><FONT face=\"Arial\">You may recall that I wondered aloud back in October whether the blogosphere existed, or at least whether its extent is quite as large as some proponents and experts claim.&nbsp;<\/FONT><FONT face=\"Arial\"> There have been further reasons for my skepticism, related to the phenomenon of Phantom Page Hits.&nbsp; Let me explain:<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Although I hate to reveal such paltry numbers, <EM>ethicalEsq?<\/EM> is the only weblog for which I have any figures, so&nbsp;here&nbsp;they are, rounded for convenience&nbsp;(figures taken from the <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/berkman\/topsites?sort=today\">Harvard Weblog Topsites Page<\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">) <\/FONT>:<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">for the five weeks from<\/FONT>&nbsp;<FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">8\/24 through 10\/1\/2003: <U>21,000<\/U> page hits (probably my <EM>best<\/EM> weeks ever)<\/FONT><br \/>\n<LI><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">for the five weeks from 10\/19 through 11\/23\/2003: <U>18,000<\/U> page hits (more than a week after my Final Post, after the Sympathy-Eulogy hits slowed down, and with no headlines on Detod, plus removal from DailyWhirl).<\/FONT><\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Only a 14% drop after closing down the shop.&nbsp; What does this mean?&nbsp; How are my Dormancy Period page hits being generated?&nbsp; My Mom&#8217;s been without a computer since October 1st, so it can&#8217;t be her, and my twin never has time to check up on me.&nbsp; Are these just robots and spiders, and echoes of pings?&nbsp; Are Howard&#8217;s 3 million hits a bit overinflated, too?<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Naturally, I&#8217;m being a little bit frivolous, but I would love to hear any explanations or theories.&nbsp; Are we all just talking to eachother, with very few actual, human &#8220;visitors&#8221; who are not also webloggers (webjournalistes)?&nbsp; Is this why there are so few Comments from people we don&#8217;t already know?&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Just wonderin&#8217;, with too much time on my idled hands and addled mind. [See Scheherazade Fowler&#8217;s thoughtful response with comments at <A href=\"http:\/\/civpro.blogs.com\/civil_procedure\/2003\/11\/nobody_here_but.html\">Stay of Execution<\/A>.]<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/FONT><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\"><STRONG><\/STRONG><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\"><STRONG><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/stories\/storyReader$100\">We<EM>a<\/EM>kend Special<\/A><\/STRONG><\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=\"Arial\"><\/FONT><\/STRONG>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\">One week ago,<FONT color=\"black\"> <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.sifry.com\/alerts\/archives\/000310.html\"><STRONG><FONT color=\"black\">Dave Sifry announced<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/A> that <EM>Technorati<\/EM> is monitoring&nbsp;<STRONG><EM>one million<\/EM> weblogs<\/STRONG>.&nbsp; I hate to&nbsp;sound skeptical, but I&#8217;ve been wondering for some time now if the blogosphere really exists &#8212; and, if so, whether its population of actual human beings is&nbsp;greater than the dozen persons who&nbsp;I&#8217;ve been able to verify as writing, editing, operating or otherwise keeping a journal-style web site.&nbsp;&nbsp; Are all those stats and links and page hits just a big hoax?<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT color=\"black\"><FONT face=\"Arial\">Frankly, obtaining a satisfactory answer to these questions is more than a little difficult for a non-techie, baby-boomer&nbsp;living in Upstate New York.&nbsp; <\/FONT><FONT face=\"Arial\">However, I had hoped to attend <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/bloggerCon\/pressRelease1\"><STRONG>BloggerCon2003<\/STRONG><\/A>&nbsp;this weekend to see&nbsp;for myself if anyone showed up besides <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/crimson1\/\"><STRONG>Dave Winer<\/STRONG><\/A> and <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jim\/\"><STRONG>Jim Moore<\/STRONG><\/A> (both of whom I&#8217;m almost certain exist, as does the famous <A href=\"http:\/\/www.ernietheattorney.net\/ernie_the_attorney\/\"><STRONG>Ernest<\/STRONG><\/A> the Internist, and <A href=\"http:\/\/bgbg.blogspot.com\/\"><STRONG>Denise<\/STRONG><\/A> of the Baggy Wardrobe, and unFoolish <A href=\"http:\/\/foolintheforest.blogspot.com\/\"><STRONG>George<\/STRONG><\/A>).&nbsp;&nbsp; <A href=\"http:\/\/bgbg.blogspot.com\/archives\/2003_09_28_bgbg_archive.html#106521050531270570\"><STRONG>Circumstances<\/STRONG><\/A> beyond my control have upset those plans, leaving me here at home with the same nagging doubts.&nbsp; [I mean they did call it Blogger<STRONG><EM>Con<\/EM><\/STRONG>.]<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\"><FONT color=\"black\">Well, my concerns increased considerably just a&nbsp;few minutes ago.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I went to the purported <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/berkman\/topsites?sort=today\"><STRONG><FONT color=\"black\">Sites We&#8217;re Hosting<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/A><FONT color=\"black\"> page&nbsp;for Weblogs at Harvard Law, and noticed that a new-to-me weblog called <STRONG><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/vespertine\/\">vespertine<\/A><\/STRONG>&nbsp;<\/FONT><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Arial\"><FONT color=\"black\">was<\/FONT> in the top ten sites for page hits today.&nbsp; I clicked on the link to see just what had attracted over 300 page hits before 6 P.M.<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\">What I found is profoundly worrisome, as this is the <EM>entire<\/EM> content of the weblog called <STRONG><EM>vespertine<\/EM><\/STRONG>:<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<H3><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/gettingStarted\"><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afterthought &#8212; Phantom Page Hits?&nbsp;(Nov. 25, 2003): Here are excerpts from an e-mail sent by the Editor to several eminent webloggers on Nov. 24, 2003: You may recall that I wondered aloud back in October whether the blogosphere existed, or at least whether its extent is quite as large as some proponents and experts claim.&nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-ZS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14111,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836\/revisions\/14111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}