Scobleizer Traffic Plunge - The Real-Time Web Can Be Bad For Your Blog

This single data point is correct - Scoble's traffic has decreased.

But, if you consider that he has blogged less than half as often as he did previously, you could argue that each story got more views. And what is his goal anyway? If his goal is to gain visibility and participate as the Web evolves, then the best places to do that are on the blog, on Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. And nobody does that better than Scoble, myself included.

If this is the only metric you can show, that's not enough. In the same period, his FriendFeed subscribers doubled and his Twitter followers increased by half, at the very least - which is a dramatic impact in a positive way to his influence.

In parallel, at a time when I have participated in all of these areas (albeit to a fraction of Robert), my blog stats have increased, though not dramatically. You can do all of these things, and there is no right or wrong way to do them.

See the stats of my blog vs. Robert's:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/louisgray.com+scobleizer.com/

Louis, you are right, Robert's traffic on the real-time web increased substantially. But it's ephemeral, it doesn't provide the same value as his blog traffic because it doesn't exist within Google in the same way web site content exists, it's not as searchable, as Robert points out. And the loss of that traffic does indeed show a loss of "thought leadership" as others have pointed out. At the moment, one set of traffic numbers related to the real-time web does not equate with "static" web traffic. Maybe at some point it will. But this is a very strong hand that Google holds in terms of fending off companies such as Twitter and Friendfeed--by giving a poor ranking to those indexes. Hey, Robert ditched them in a New York second!

Robert hasn't ditched Twitter and FriendFeed in a New York second. He's taking a one week hiatus from both, just like he has taken hiatuses from his blog on previous occasions.

He may have quickly written how he "was addicted" to both and made it sound past tense, but all he has done is moved his current attention to one focus of activity, rather than broadly covering all pieces.

Even today, when he said he was "off FriendFeed", he made a comment on his own posts. So this is too early.

Louis: Thanks for speaking for Robert, I know that you know him well. I used to sit next to Robert at Podtech and I would often say to him, I don't know how you do it because he was able to do it all, and do it all the time. But even an online athlete such as Robert needs to decide where his time produces the most value. It's clear that the real-time web is currently a less valuable use of time than publishing on well established web sites such as his own. That might change. You clearly need to do some of both-- even though the real-time rewards are short-term and fleeting (in terms of search indexes).

Didn't he use all those tweets to drive traffic to his blog by linking to media & posts there? If not, why not? Seems to me it could be both/and instead of either/or. Work backwards from good blog posts, highlight them in tweets + link back to blog.

Tom: I disagree with your thesis. I specifically made the choice to blog less to focus on Twitter and FriendFeed and I see that that investment has paid off very well for me.

Yes, my blog traffic has gone way down, but my FriendFeed posts are now being found all over the place in Google and are going up and I'm the #1 most followed person there.

On Twitter I still am in the top 10 in terms of organically gained followers, which is quite impressive.

Now I have a distribution channel for my blog content that is very good and more repeatable than relying on getting on Digg or Techmeme or Stumbleupon.

Also, while we're talking about Techmeme, its traffic growth has been fairly flat, while Twitter and FriendFeed's growth has been much faster. That's why I focused on Twitter and FriendFeed more than on my blog.

Also now I have INBOUND information services that are much better than just Google Reader or TechMeme alone and that is going to be a good place for me to get content as well.

Robert, thanks for the clarification.

I love the fact that things keep on changing in the this shattered/fragmented media landscape of today. And I don't think they will ever stop changing.

That makes it challenging for both media and PR to tell their stories. Or rather, to get attention for their stories and the subsequent conversations.

Agree about the fragmenting, we'll all be using something different next year anyway, no sense worrying about who's using what and how much, we're all out there on the edge trying things out and experimenting. I doubt we'll be using Twitter or FriendFeed in two years anyway.

I'm remain a huge fan of Techmeme (my home page which alternates with feedly and a few others). I do wish they would roll out different channels though.