Top 100 analyst blogs

01Oct07

imageThis league table is a global ranking of the top 100 analyst blogs.

This method of communication has increasingly been used with great effect by the analyst community to engage in conversations. According to Tekrati there are approximately 225 analyst blogs - some have taken this form of communication as their main public output method, others have are using this to great effect to act as a PR tool to promote their research.

Whilst some firms have excelled in this (e.g. Forrester) other large companies are still lagging behind (e.g. Gartner) - however, what is clear is that this form of communication is becoming more important year-on-year.

I should point out that if this survey was completed a week later then Forrester’s new social media hire - Jeremiah Owyang would undoubtedly come top - assuming he came along with his very well read Web Strategy blog.

Congratulations to everyone who has made the top 100.

    bloglines tn_techno.jpg tn_dig.jpg tn_technobable.jpg tn_totalscore.jpg
1 The Groundswell 12 18 24 2 11 67
2 Message 12 14 24 3 14 67
3 James Governor’s MonkChips 14 18 21 1 13 67
4 tecosystems 14 17 19 1 13 64
5 Service-Oriented Architecture 14 16 17 5 11 63
6 CMS Watch Trends and Features 12 18 18 3 10 61
7 Hitwise - Heather Hopkins 12 11 19 3 11 56
8 People Over Process 12 13 17 1 13 56
9 Forrester’s Marketing Blog 12 14 19 0 10 55
10 Security Incite 12 12 17 1 13 55
11 Hitwise - Bill Tancer 12 13 17 3 10 55
12 Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect 14 8 17 5 9 53
13 451 CAOS Theory 12 11 15 1 13 52
14 Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless 10 13 14 1 14 52
15 Being Peter Kim 10 9 18 1 13 51
16 Collaborative Thinking 10 12 16 1 12 51
17 Jupiter - David Card 12 14 14 1 10 51
18 James Bach’s Blog 12 15 14 1 9 51
19 Peter O’Kelly’s Reality Check 12 12 15 0 11 50
20 Richi Blog 12 3 19 3 12 49
21 Peter Lacey’s Weblog 12 11 14 1 10 48
22 Kelsey Group Blogs 10 11 14 1 11 47
23 Jon Arnold’s Blog 12 8 14 1 10 45
24 Securosis.com 10 10 13 1 11 45
25 Jupiter - Michael Gartenberg 12 0 19 3 10 44
26 isen.blog 14 2 17 1 10 44
27 Jupiter - Joseph Lazlo 12 11 12 0 9 44
28 Jupiter - Ian Fogg 12 11 11 1 9 44
29 Jupiter - Nate Elliott 14 12 10 0 8 44
30 Jupiter - Mark Mulligan 12 9 13 1 8 43
31 MacehiterWard-Dutton 12 9 11 0 11 43
32 IDC eXchange 12 11 9 1 9 42
33 Identity and Privacy Strategies 10 4 14 0 12 40
34 Brandon Hall - Janet Clarey 12 3 11 0 14 40
35 Jupiter - Julie Ask 12 8 10 0 10 40
36 Always On Real-Time Access 10 6 13 0 10 39
37 Tech - Surf - Blog 12 0 14 1 11 38
38 Hitwise - Sandra Hanchard 12 1 12 2 11 38
39 Irwin Lazar’s Real-time Blog 12 4 11 0 11 38
40 i-mode Business Strategy 12 13 7 1 5 38
41 Contentblogger - News 12 1 15 0 9 37
42 Open Source Unleashed 12 4 12 0 9 37
43 Freeform Comment 12 3 11 0 11 37
44 elemental links 10 8 11 0 8 37
45 Ceci N’est Pas Un Bob 14 7 11 0 5 37
46 DBMS2 12 4 10 1 9 36
47 Information to Knowledge Man. 12 5 10 0 9 36
48 BlogERP - Jim Holincheck’s HCM 10 2 12 1 10 35
49 StorWars 12 1 11 0 11 35
50 BizTech Talk 10 1 13 1 9 34
51 Web Globalization News 10 3 12 1 8 34
52 Gilbane Group Blog 14 0 11 0 9 34
53 Z Trek - The Alan Zeichick 12 2 10 1 9 34
54 Pattern Finder 10 4 10 0 10 34
55 Text Technologies 12 3 8 1 10 34
56 Application Platform Strategies 10 4 11 0 8 33
57 The Enterprise System Spectator 12 1 11 0 9 33
58 Jupiter - Barry Parr 12 0 11 0 9 32
59 The Monash Report 12 1 10 1 8 32
60 Business Integration 12 4 9 0 7 32
61 Security and Risk Management 12 2 9 0 9 32
62 Amy Wohl’s Opinions on SaaS 12 4 8 0 8 32
63 Virtually Speaking 0 2 15 2 12 31
64 Illuminata Perspectives 10 0 13 0 8 31
65 BriefingsDirect Transcripts 10 1 11 0 9 31
66 Jupiter - David Schatsky 12 4 9 0 6 31
67 E-Communications & Community 10 3 9 1 8 31
68 Security & Risk Management 10 2 9 0 10 31
69 Parks Associates 10 2 9 0 9 30
70 David Adams’ MobileStartup 10 6 8 0 6 30
71 THINK IT Services 10 1 10 0 8 29
72 Berlecon Analyst Weblog 12 1 8 0 8 29
73 Travel Technology 8 5 8 0 8 29
74 Gilbane Events Blog 12 2 7 1 7 29
75 Out of the Box 6 2 10 1 9 28
76 BriefingsDirect 8 2 9 0 9 28
77 The Collaboration Blog 8 4 9 0 7 28
78 Contentblogger - Events 10 3 8 0 7 28
79 Enterprise Search Blog 12 1 8 0 7 28
80 NanoMarkets TOP Blog 10 0 7 4 7 28
81 The Geo Factor 12 2 7 0 7 28
82 Content Technology CTO 12 4 6 0 6 28
83 Gilbane Publishing Technology 10 2 10 0 5 27
84 The Bourne Report 12 1 7 0 7 27
85 doingITbetter 10 0 8 0 8 26
86 Ironick 10 2 8 0 6 26
87 Bricks to Clicks 12 2 7 0 5 26
88 Steve’s IT Rants 8 1 11 0 5 25
89 The Innovation Zone 8 2 7 0 8 25
90 Sageza Says 10 1 6 0 8 25
91 IDEAS Insights 8 2 7 0 7 24
92 Beagle Research 10 5 0 0 9 24
93 Customer Experience Matters 0 2 10 1 10 23
94 Osterman Research Blog 8 1 8 0 6 23
95 bit blue blog 10 1 6 0 5 22
96 Data Center Strategies Blog 0 1 11 0 9 21
97 China Trends 6 1 8 0 6 21
98 DVR Bulletin 6 1 7 0 7 21
99 Hitwise - Robin Goad 0 1 10 1 8 20
100 A Software Insider’s Point of View 2 1 7 0 10 20

Edit: 3 October

Mike Rothman’s Security Incite blog has jumped to 10th place in the table as the error that calculated his subscribers has now been fixed.  

Following the publication of the league table in June, there has been quite a lot of discussion around the validity of such a ‘league table’. Consequently I have taken the feedback from the previous research and modified the methodology.

Scores are now calculated as follows:

    Google PageRank (0 to 10) – Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting (0 to 10) to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The ranking uses the actual PageRank as part of its algorithm.
    Bloglines Subscribers (0 to 10) – Bloglines displays the amount of subscribers each blog has to its feed(s). Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (0 to 20) that was used as part of the algorithm.
    Technorati Ranking (0 to 10) – Technorati ranking relates the authority of a particular blog (via the number of sites pointing to it). The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, and each range was assigned a number (0 to 30) that was used as part of the algorithm.
    When total scores were tied, the blog with the higher Technorati authority was given a higher placement.
    Digg Points (0 to 10) - Blog articles that have been ‘Digged’ have been deemed by readers to have a high content value. This external subjective score is a great way to identify the quality of the content published in an analyst’s blog.
    Technobabble Points (0 to 15) – As the only personal subjective measure in the algorithm, 0 to 15 opinion points were assigned to each blog. I value frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content with a good number of comments.
    Weighting - Each specific variable listed above was given a standard score out of 10. Using a weighting scale I varied the importance of the each metric to establish a blogs total score. For the table listed above the following weightings were used:
    Google Pagerank 20%
    Bloglines Subscribers 20%
    Technorati 30%
    Digg 15%`
    Technobabble (content/frequency/comments) 15%

There’s quite a few conclusions you can draw from this - notably the high ranking of blogs that focus on social media and open source as well as the very poor presence of major global analyst houses. I will publish subsequent posts analysing this table over the next few weeks. In the meantime I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and comments.

This league table was inspired by Todd And’s Power 150, a ranking of the top English-language marketing blogs developed by Todd Andrlik.

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Filed under: analyst relations, blogger relations, blogging, noteworthy, social media   |  

26 Responses to “Top 100 analyst blogs”  

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  1. 1 Peter Kim on October 1, 2007 said:

    Thanks Jonny. Valuable work here.

  2. 2 James Governor on October 1, 2007 said:

    hello mate. this is very cool, obviously. just one question- how does the ranking work, given the top three are all on 67 points? is it joint first? or is there some other weighting for Stowe and Charlene?

  3. 3 Jonny on October 1, 2007 said:

    Thanks Peter and James for your kind words.

    When total scores were tied, the blog with the higher Technorati authority was given a higher placement.

    Hope the above answers your question James.

  4. 4 Mike Gotta on October 3, 2007 said:

    Thanks - very interesting. FYI: I actually have more subscribers via Google (347) than Bloglines (198), 1315 subscribers overall actually (Collaborative Thinking) - many are coming in via NewsGator Enterprise (203), Windows RSS Platform (57). No good answer I suppose … not sure how Feedburner data could be used as a source. SiteMeter might help with metrics perhaps…

    Congrats to my Burton Group co-workers (Peter O’Kelly, Pete Lacey, Guy Creese (Pattern Finder) and the team blog from our Identity group …

  5. 5 Jonny on October 3, 2007 said:

    Thanks Mike for your mail. The problem of bloglines is a recurring one as the source I would most like to use is Feedburner (which accumulates data from most feeds). However as this is only accessible to the host I am unable to use it.
    The only caveat is that the same methodology is applied to everyone - from my experience, even though the total numbers of subscibers may differ, the ratio from one blog to another remains the same.
    Congrats again for your blog success.

  6. 6 Duncan Chapple on October 8, 2007 said:

    Great to hear you’re using standard scores: this should make the results much more responsive to changes in the data.

  7. 7 Jonny on October 8, 2007 said:

    Thanks Duncan

    I noted your comment last time with reference to Z-Scores - I agree and believe it makes it far better this time.

  8. 8 Jeremiah Owyang on November 1, 2007 said:

    Great list, you’ve balanced the ratings by including different authority metrics. While being in the top 100 is certainly a bragging point, what’s really important is how analysts use their blogs to help clients, guide the industry, and connect with people using these tools. For analysts that cover social media or social computing the ol’ practice what you preach is important.

    I’ll talk to you in the conversation…

  9. 9 Graeme Thickins on November 23, 2007 said:

    thanks, Jonny — it’s an honor to be on your list

    but the best thing of all is that it allowed me to
    discover your great blog! I’m hooked on it now :-)

    we’re definitely birds of a feather — in fact, just
    this past month, I launched yet another blog
    called http://www.NewMediaWise.com

    cheers,
    Graeme

  10. 10 Robin Goad on January 24, 2008 said:

    Hi Jonny - any plans to update this list?

    Thanks, Robin

  11. 11 Jonny on January 24, 2008 said:

    Hi Robin

    Just to let you know the updated table will be coming out in February.

    Jonny

  12. 12 Robin Goad on January 25, 2008 said:

    Nice one, thanks!

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