ESPN Blog Buzz, My Take on it
Posted on | April 20, 2009 | 1 Comment
ESPN Blog Buzz, My Take on it. For those of you that don’t know, ESPN has a new short segment they do each morning where they go over the “Blog Buzz“. They talk about the days top 5 blog topics and they mention the names of a couple blogs. This sent shock waves through the blogosphere, because “Main Stream Media” usually abhors blogs. I am sure ESPN has had both positive and negative feedback, but I think they will keep this, and it might expand.
I love the segment idea. I hope it expands, but in its infancy, here are my critiques.
- Some of the percentages looked a little off. This morning I saw “Chris Webber vs Kenny Smith” with something like 12% of the Blog Buzz. I looked on Ballhype and only 3-4 blogs uploaded that video or linked to it. It was popular today, but to say that 12% of the thousands of blogs were talking about it seems off. I am not saying they are lying. I am saying that the statistics need to be explained a little more. (Edit: percentages are clarified below the video.)
- The quotes from the the blogs seem haphazardly thrown together. My bud at The Sports Culture was quoted as saying “You mess with the Shaqtus, you get pricked“. Was that the best line from his post about the Shaq vs Amundson prank war? Was that the best line they read from the many blogs they observed? It looked like they just opened a blog link up and surveyed for the word Shaq, and used that sentence.
- The people talking about it seem like they are doing a homework assignment.
OK, enough bashing. Like I said, I actually like Blog Buzz a lot. I hope for it to expand, and it would be awesome to be on it. ( I am not one of those bloggers that think that the man is always holding me down, even if the man is always holding me down ) . Here are my solutions.
- ( I know this is a pipe dream ) Have one respected blogger go over the top 5 of the day. They can easily quote a few great bloggers and sound like they are having the time of their lives doing it. It would be very easy to “Convince” a respected blogger to do this.
- Bottom line is that I would have 1 person do it. Make sure that person reads A LOT of blogs. Viewers sense insincerity, and they hate it. Having “just anyone” do the “task” of “blog buzz” is a real bad idea. They have draft guys, and fantasy baseball guys, I would have sports blog guy.
- Do away with the percentages and just have a buzz meter. That cuts the percentage confusion way down. (Edit: percentages are clarified below the video.)
As I said, I really like Blog Buzz. It is a huge success in my eyes, I am just being picky. I would like it to grow.
Sports Media Challenge is the Blog Buzz machine giving ESPN the Sports Blog skinny. They pick apart the sports blogosphere and use their computerized system to explain it. Whilst doing this they have ranked NESW Sports currently #16 on their front page. ( They are not including corporate sponsored sports blogs. ) Ballhype has NESW Sports ranked #20, currently. Does that mean that this is one of the best blogs? No. It does, however, mean that I am making a Buzz. And that is nice to know.
Below is a video of one of the first ESPN Blog Buzz editions. Hat tip Awful Announcing.
A member of the Sports Media Challenge team sent me an email to clarify the percentages. “Those percentages are based on the top 7 topics in the blogosphere. So Buzz Manager pulls the top 7 stories, and then the 100% is distributed between those 7 stories. So Webber and Kenny Smith weren’t 12% of the blogosphere, but rather 12% of those top 7 topics.”.
Thanks, now that makes sense.
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- New Interview with Bob Costas and Buzz Bissinger, What makes a good writer?
- Buzz Bissinger is to Speaking as he thinks Bloggers are to the Internet
- HHR and GMT want a blog war. I’ll give them a blog war.
- Required Reading for your 2008 Sports Blog wrap up
- NESW Sports is a Top 50 Sports Blog?
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May 9th, 2009 @ 11:03 am
[...] see a little segment that started about 1 month ago called “ESPN Blog Buzz”. I wrote a post about it. I talked about how great it was, and I still think so. Nothing has changed there. I think it is [...]