What Kind of Blog Do You Read/ Have?

By Raj DashBest of, Blogging

Valleywag has a great heat map defining the four spheres of audience reaction for some top blogs (and some websites). It’s actually more of a Venn diagram, and some of the top blogs are placed within each circle. Only Boing Boing falls into all four circles of reaction. Nothing seems to be in Revenge, and Adult Friend Finder is under Sex.

Here are a few others, although it’s not easy to tell with some blogs/ sites:

  • Indignation: Daily Kos.
  • Scandal = Indignation + Titillation: Wonkette, Gawker and what appears to be a photo of Michelle Malkin.
  • Titillation: YouTube, PerezHilton.
  • Lust = Titillation + Stimulation: Apple blog
  • Stimulation: GigaOm, Google, Yahoo
  • Novelty = Stimulation + Affirmation: Digg, TechCrunch (kinda hard to tell)
  • Affirmation: Seth Godin, Lifehacker
  • Outrage: Instapundit

I don’t know if I would have come up with the same breakdown, but it’s definitely an interesting premise. In fact, I never considered that there were these partitions in audience reaction. This leads me to ask, where does your blog fall in this Venn Diagram? I think that most of my blogs fall into the Affirmation and Stimulation sections, with a single one in Outrage and/or Indignation.

Now here’s something to consider. I haven’t done a blog by blog comparison, but I vaguely recall Boing Boing having about 115,000+ subscribers in Feedburner (I don’t see a button anymore). Newsgator shows 53K – I don’t remember what Bloglines has. So does that mean that a blog that’s all things to all people is likely to do better? Any comments?

P.S. Where is Slashdot?

5 thoughts on “What Kind of Blog Do You Read/ Have?”

  2. Looking at what Ahmed said (so true mate, so true) It becomes so obvious why the media is so biased. Unfortunately, facts can be boring, and the usual slant on a story is what gives it ‘pep’.

    Somehow I think my blog kinda sits in with all of them, due to my general randomness as a person. I tend to post about anything, which I suppose is my problem. And although I mainly post my personal opinions on things, I don’t think I have the impact of some other bloggers. Once again, a big problem for me.

  3. the more i think about it, the more it seems that people want cheap thrills and controversy over anything else.

    heavily biased views (whether you are against or for them) always incur a strong response and following.

    Michael Masterson talked about ‘binge buying’ in his ETR newsletter the other day – if I remember correctly it was about how people buy to satisfy their wants, and because we always keep wanting what we don’t have, we will always want more of the stuff that stokes our desires and evokes a strong emotional response in us.

    Sucks that quality and truth has to lose out to human nature…but if you are a pro blogger and want money, remember that the harder you hit that nerve, the more links you will draw and then monetization is a step-by-step, easy process.

  4. Very nice synopsis of the audience. I’m inclined to agree. Though I doubt indignation raises its head much here at Perf. (rare).

  5. Damn…

    where does Performancing fit in? Stimulation / Affirmation? Probably the later.

    I don’t know about you guys, but I’d like some more titillation around here (no puns intended, of course).

    Although looking at that graph, that would put us in the same category as AFF, which can’t be good…unless that’s the reason you’re blogging 😀

    On a more serious note, it would be be interesting to use these spheres of reaction to estimate audience stickability and different styles of blogging (what sort of flaghship content works in the titillation category?).

    More thoughts on audiences…

    Affirmation – loyal audience
    Stimulation – high degree of audience participation
    Indignation – herd mentality
    Titillation – Pure entertainment, needs freshness or will fade away

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