If I read Dave “Technorati” Sifry’s latest State of the Blogosphere post correctly — and when it comes to numbers, the chances of my going right is nil — rather than being shaped like a hockey stick, the blogosphere is shaped like an alert python that’s just eaten some big bloggers.

There used to be a head of the tail that consisted of bloggers with lots of links going into them and a tail as long all get-out consisting of bloggers with a few links. Now, there’s still a head, but there are fewer bloggers and more mainstream media in it. The bloggers who used to be in the head (plus others, for more bloggers now have lots of links) have been pushed past the line’s elbow and form a bump. And the long tail has gotten longer…27M blogs long.

Here’s what I think is happening, if my understanding of the stats is correct (which it probably isn’t): As more people blog, the sites that we all read in common remain the MSM. Links to the MSM thus increase in almost a straight line as the overall size of the blogosphere increases. But as blogging spreads, interests get more diverse, so there are fewer blogs that we all read; those sites get forced into the python’s lump.

Does this mean the mainstream media are “winning”? Nah, it just means that they remain the main stream. We don’t yet know if they are a habit we’re going to overcome, an institution waiting to be Wikipedia-ed, or if they will transform themselves enough to continue being our common ground.

(Disclosure: I’m on Technorati’s board of advisors. And I’m a friend of Dave Sifry’s.)

Technorati has introduced a welcome new feature in beta: A slider that lets you adjust how important blogging “authority” is to you in a particular search. As Dave says, turning up the “authority” volume is useful when doing a search in a heavily-spammed area such as “mortgage.” [Tags: technorati blogosphere]

Categories: blogs dw