29
June
2009
|
10:08 AM
America/Los_Angeles

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

Robert Scoble has been a tireless evangelist for the real-time web and he has been spending much of his time on Twitter and Friendfeed, and less and less time on his blog Scobleizer. [Please see:  Is Twitter (and Friendfeed) Killing Blogging? Scobleizer Hasn't Posted In 12 Days!!!]

Now he has sworn off FriendFeed and Twitter, saying that those services are "hurting long-time knowledge." This about turn comes on the heels of Mr Scoble berating Kara Swisher at All Things D for not taking part in the real-time web.


It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?


However, by largely avoiding the real-time web Ms Swisher and Mr Mossberg have chosen to protect their largest asset -- their web site traffic.

By neglecting, Scobleizer, a web site run by Mr Scoble's employer, Rackspace, traffic to the site has plunged.

In just two months, from March to May 2009, Compete.com reports that traffic to Scobleizer fell from 181,500 unique visitors to 91,792. That's a nearly 50% drop in unique visitors!!! If the traffic for June can be projected, it looks headed for a 75% plunge.


I can imagine that Rackspace isn't too pleased to have such a massive drop in audience for its advertising and outages reports.

I'm sure that Robert can bring back the traffic but it's clear that its going to be difficult for him to also be active in all the other places, Building 43, Google Reader, email, Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook. And there's a lesson here for others too. You can't do it all.