Dave Sifry of Technorati has posted the second part of his State of the Blogosphere report, which compares blogs with mainstream media (MSM). The New York Times is tops for linkage, but the BBC, Guardian Unlimited and even Times Online are all doing well.
The graphs show a typical power law distribution with a "big head" and a long tail. Sifry also identifies another area:
This realm of publishing, which I call "The Magic Middle" of the attention curve, highlights some of the most interesting and influential bloggers and publishers that are often writing about topics that are topical or niche, like Chocolate and Zucchini on food, Wi-fi Net News on Wireless networking, TechCrunch on Internet Companies, Blogging Baby on parenting, Yarn Harlot on knitting, or Stereogum on music - these are blogs that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing.
At Technorati, we define this to be the bloggers who have from 20-1000 other people linking to them. As the chart above shows, there are about 155,000 people who fit in this group. And what is so interesting to me is how interesting, exciting, informative, and witty these blogs often are. I've noticed that often these blogs are more topical or focused on a niche area, like gardening, knitting, nanotech, mp3s or journalism and a great way to find them has been through Blog Finder.
Sifry also introduces a new Technorati feature: "sort by authority."
