Media and influence: Bloggers eclipsing traditional tech press claims Wall Street Journal

Back in May of 2005 we compared the Google mentions of long-time tech pundit (and TechTV star) John Dvorak to top bloggers, and found him to be an underdog in terms of mentions. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the tech bloggers are becoming more influential than their high-profile counterparts in the traditional press.

It seems quality of audience, not quantity is the new relevant metric of influence. In Tech Blogs Produce New Elite to Help Track The Industry’s Issues, Wall Street Journal Reporter Lee Gomes describes how this new breed of media influencers are “every bit as important as their boosters said they would be.”

Reporters for the big mainstream newspapers and magazines, long accustomed to fawning treatment at corporate events, now show up and find that the best seats often go to the A-list bloggers. And living at the front of the velvet rope line means the big bloggers are frequently pitched and wooed. In fact, with the influence peddling universe in this state of flux, it’s not uncommon for mainstream reporters, including the occasional technology columnist, to lobby bloggers to include links to their print articles.

Even the top bloggers don’t get that much traffic says Gomes. He says tech.memeorandum only gets 12,000 readers a day, but it’s the quality of that readership that makes all the difference.

Results are what matters. Buzz Bruggeman has mentioned several times at our Blog Business Summits that when his product ActiveWords received a positive product review in a major national newspaper (millions of potential readers) the clicks and orders were a tiny fraction of what he saw when the first prominent blogger gave the product a thumbs up.