The Columnist Manifesto

The Althouse Effect

"A ridiculous irony in the game of blogging is that you can score a lot of links by saying something that people disagree with vehemently." So writes Althouse in a recent post. But I say the game of blogging isn't serious enough to have "ridiculous ironies," just ordinary ironies.

I was privileged to have a link from Althouse yesterday. After learning about it, I sat back and waited for the Althouse Effect, an anticipated major spike in my hit counter numbers. I did indeed get a spike, as my average, hovering at the 25-45 hits per day level, rose to 82 yesterday and 140 and counting as of 10:30 p.m. today. I'm doing almost as well as getting linked to a discussion thread on UserFriendly. But in another one of those "ironies of the blogging game," my spike may not really be attributable to Althouse Effect. As best I can track these things -- viewing the referring URL list on my hit counters -- it seems as if the majority of recent traffic is coming from new links other than Althouse. Indeed, last night, when the spike first became observable, the great majority of new traffic was coming from a couple of links from Nina. Nina-referrals were outpolling Althouse-referrals by a margin of about 4-1.

This is not a ridiculous, but a delicious irony in that Nina is so nonchalant about hit statistics that she doesn't even have a hit counter. I'm inferring that, unbeknownst to her, she has quite a substantial readership. Either that or one or two incredibly obsessive people who repeatedly went to her blog and clicked the link to me.

Today, Althouse-referrals to my blog rose relative to Nina-referrals -- perhaps Althouse readers are daytime blog-checkers, while Nina gets the night-owl crowd -- but Althouse-referrals do not seem to be in any sense dominant, as the Tonya Show seems to have emerged as the plurality front-runner.

I think Nina would say hit-counting is silly. I think it's fun -- not at a level that would produce ridiculous ironies, but something on the order of accumulating "masters points" at your local bridge club.

Project Bozzo

The "TTLB" ("The Truth Laid Bear") Ecosystem is another blog game, one that feeds on the bloggers' desire for links. Hits and links are all very rough proxies for readers, which are in turn rough proxies for attention and approval. The TTLB Ecosystem ranks enrolled blogs by the number of unique incoming links to each blog. In collaboration with Marginal Utility, I am launching Project Bozzo. This is an effort to raise our status in the TTLB Ecosystem by fanatically linking to each other. Just to set the starting bar: at the opening of Project Bozzo, I was a "flippery fish" with 7 links, and Marginal Utility was a "crawly amphibian" with 10 links.

Why "Project Bozzo"? Although, like hit counters, the TTLB Ecosystem is another kinda-fun self-absorption game for bloggers, it strikes me as a bit pretentious to claim to find "Truth" in counting links. Project Bozzo is designed to explore the nature of this truth. I will add that I like the name Bozzo, and that Tom Bozzo's blog, Marginal Utility, is a must read for anyone who wants to stay informed about the gathering storm of propaganda by Bush Administration flacks to promote the great push to privatize Social Security. Check his posts here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Bozzo lays bare the truth. Plus he knows a lot about cars.

Bozzo, Bozzo, Bozzo!