The Strata of the Internet
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
I'm going to be away for a few days. Hopping the pond and spending a long weekend in London. It's supposed to be a bit of a vacation, so I won't be posting anything between now and next Tuesday or Wednesday (maybe even Thursday!).
But, I've got a complicated idea kicking around in my head right now, inspired partly by this post by Tim Malbon at Made By Many, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this question:
If you were to categorize all the different kinds of sites on the web, from biggest audience to smallest, what would those categories look like? Where would you draw the lines? What would separate one group from another? How are these distinctions useful?
I'm thinking about sites from Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook, all the way down to tiny blogs and single serving sites, and what Bud Caddell likes to call the forgotten ship-wrecks of the web resting at the bottom.
Discuss. And please be sure to leave your full name and a link to your site with your comment, so that I can give you proper credit if I end up stealing your brilliant ideas : )
P.S. My last post A New Business Model for Digital Agencies got some great comments. I recommend checking them out.
But, I've got a complicated idea kicking around in my head right now, inspired partly by this post by Tim Malbon at Made By Many, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this question:
If you were to categorize all the different kinds of sites on the web, from biggest audience to smallest, what would those categories look like? Where would you draw the lines? What would separate one group from another? How are these distinctions useful?
I'm thinking about sites from Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook, all the way down to tiny blogs and single serving sites, and what Bud Caddell likes to call the forgotten ship-wrecks of the web resting at the bottom.
Discuss. And please be sure to leave your full name and a link to your site with your comment, so that I can give you proper credit if I end up stealing your brilliant ideas : )
P.S. My last post A New Business Model for Digital Agencies got some great comments. I recommend checking them out.
3 Comments:
I’d look at sites in terms of width and depth. A wide, but shallow site (i.e. Google) is likely to have a large user-base but doesn’t provide a whole lot of depth of content. A site that is still somewhat broad (i.e. NYTimes.com) can be a little deeper in terms of content but reaches a smaller audience. A step deeper but less wide is a site that may cover a specific content area (i.e. Mets.com). Still deeper, but not very wide appeal would be a blog/site that covers one particular subject area in depth (i.e. DaveKingman.com).
You can find content about former Met Dave Kingman by searching Google, looking him up in the New York Times archives, finding him in the historical players section of the Mets.com or by visiting DaveKingman.com. As these sites get narrower they get deeper and more focused. This kind of categorization lets you look at size relative to passion/interest in the subject matter. There are some small sites with rabid fans that deserve credit. This categorization accounts for that credit.
In my personal meanderings on the internets, I tend to separate the sites I visit on an almost daily basis into categories that represent their usefulness to me (personally, professionally, or in terms of my online activity and what content I choose to link to / disseminate / etc.). I have three categories, and speaking in terms of audience size, as you suggest, they would be: 1) large content aggregators; 2) industry-specific sites and blogs; and 3) social media services.
Large content aggregators tend to be news sites and group / corporate blogs that generate huge amounts of content on a daily basis. I spend the least amount of time on these feeds / sites because I am generally skimming blurbs for stories I find interesting enough to click through for the whole story. I spend a far greater portion of my time on industry-specific sites and blogs. These are a mix of large content producers (Design Observer and PSFK, for example), but also include a wide variety of individual blogs, as well. So while in terms of audience size some of these sites should probably fall into the first category, for me they don't, because I'm generally reading everything I come across, not just blurbs. I probably spend the most time on my social media sites, because with the way in which I use my networks, and considering the people I have in them, I know that I can always spend the most amount of time engaging with the ideas / news / links these friends and colleagues are disseminating, and know that for the most part they will all be useful to me in some way, either personally or professionally.
For me, primarily, these distinctions are all about time and relationship management on the web. I want to be informed broadly (if shallowly), as well as specifically (and deeply), and thinking about the sites in the way that I do helps me, for example, decide which feeds get an automatic "mark all as read" in my reader if I'm having a busy day, and which ones I save until I have the time to read them thoroughly. So while I suppose my distinctions don't conform, really, to the "audience size" model you're contemplating, hopefully this gives you a different perspective on audience size versus actual content relevance to individual users.
It's a fascinating idea and I can't wait to read your article on it. Have fun across the pond!
Actually, Atherton, I think your distinctions probably DO conform to the "audience size" model. Maybe not exactly, but generally speaking, the wider sites have the largest group of users.
Of course, I would make a distinction between an "audience" and a group of users. Does Google have an "audience" or just a group of users? To me the widest sites are more like a cineplex, a gateway to the content I want. This may be yet another way to categorize sites, transaction sites (i.e. www.expedia.com) that allow us to find/acquire what we're really after, helper sites that help us accomplish tasks (i.e. www.m-w.com) and content sites (i.e. www.mikearauz.com) that actually house the content, not reference material or tools, just content.
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