What they say about us: from cbs.marketwatch.com
Bloggers blew it
Commentary: Much posting, little impact
By Frank Barnako, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:37 PM ET Nov 3, 2004
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- No one reads blogs.
Oops! I did it again. Better get under my desk because the e-mail flames arrive.
But when the most popular political blog draws less than 270,000 visitors on Election Day, you've got to ask, "What's the point?" (More traffic reports below.)
"How dare you say such a thing?" "What about the 4 million blogs Technorati is tracking?" "What about the fact that 11 months ago RSS was a geek secret and now it's a bolt-on to My Yahoo?" "What about the 100 million page impressions a month Blogads.com says it delivers?"
All that may be true. It's just that after the presidential election, it appears to me that the only readers of blogs ... are bloggers! They are a good group. Educated and engaged. But they're also like mice in a rotating cage: running in place, bumping into the same old people.
Despite all the anti-Bush screeds on Web logs, the frequent priming of wordy bonfires with Bush's National Guard duty records, the rush to judgment about missing explosives in Iraq ... it just didn't matter. All those opinions. All that Internet buzz. So little impact. Could it be not even bloggers trust what they read on blogs?
Blogs were quick to publish real or made-up exit polls at midafternoon, showing Kerry strength. That killed a 60-point rally in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
At least some traders read blogs, then, and act on what they read. Not so, it would appear, young voters. Advertisers including Nike (NKE) and Audi think Weblogs are the medium to reach young consumers. So where was the youth and minority vote? Not reading political blogs, it appears. MSNBC says the percentage of young voters who cast ballots was the same as it was four years ago.
Don Imus says his favorite moment came about 2 a.m., when NBC's Campbell Brown was interviewing P. Diddy about his "Vote or Die" campaign. Seems to me it's dead. Where were the 18-29s? At Meetups? The Associated Press says exit polls found blacks made up roughly the same proportion of voters as in 2000.
GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie's incredibly optimistic spin on CNN early in the evening was an effective, "old media"-style get-out-the-vote entreaty. While his mouth told how confident he was, his eyes transmitted a subliminal message: "The bloggers said the early exit polls were horrible. We need to pile on. Go vote! It's not too late."
Bottom line: Political blogging is like Ralph Nader. Nobody pays attention.
Exclusive: Political site traffic soars
The biggest Election Day winner was DrudgeReport.com. The number of Tuesday visitors to the site was nearly 1 million, according to an analysis by comScore Networks. That's 60 percent more than Drudge's usual daily traffic. The Kerry and Bush campaign sites each saw daily traffic double, while FoxNews.com hosted 1.8 million visitors, about 75 percent more than on a usual day. Comparablly, CNN.com had 63 percent more visitors, while WashingtonPost.com was up 98 percent.
Understandably, the number of visits to some of the biggest political Weblogs was high. DailyKos.com's traffic was nearly triple normal at 260,000 visitors, while Instapundit was up by 140 percent.