Proof That PayPerPost Devalues Blogs
Disclaimer: The estimations in this post are only based off of one factual number, and should not be taken as fact under any circumstances. They are estimations, and pretty uninformed ones at that.
Jem’s comment on Mari’s last PPP rant got Mari thinking. Then typing. After about 5 minutes (plus 20 minutes needed to dismiss the fire department from the false alarm the smoke coming out of Mari’s head caused), Mari had post material. Voici un post.
This is a bit long, and will make any informed, blogging-statistic-whiz-kids want to pull their hair out. So please, get a drink, find a snack, and possibly put a hat on. (Mari doesn’t want any statistics-lovers going bald on account of her stupidity!)
Jem Is Right: Ego +?
It [splogvertising] does devalue blogging as a whole. Jem is absolutely right. First off, blogging is a pretty obscure hobby. An impromptu science-fair-esque survey in front of a local grocery store could easily prove this to be generally true. Despite the number of blogs being tracked on Technorati, there are still very few actual bloggers (non-sploggers). The number is probably less than 10% of the number reported to exist, which happens to be 112.8 million, and that’s giving blogging as a legitimate, productive hobby a lot of room to brag about itself.
A Statistical Nightmare
If there are 11,280,000 actual non-splog, updated at least twice blogs out there, then we filter out the ones that people don’t update and have forgotten, that’s probably again, a tenth of the previous number. So we’re down to 1,280,000 blogs that post semi-regularly about actual information, regardless of the importance of that information (in this hypothesis, the teenybopper blogs that post about “OMG i wEnT to da M411 yesturd3y” are counted as being legitimate on the same level as BoingBoing and Engadget).
Utter Rubbish
So our number of valid blogs would be about 1,128,000 (using this incredibly fudged math). For example’s sake, say that 10% of them do PPP (and that’s giving PPP lots of room to brag). So that’s 112800 blogs that do PPP. Add that to the number of splogs, the number of blogs that have been forgotten, and the number of blogs have less than three posts. We’re then have roughly 111,784,800 blogs that the average person (one with no technology background whatsoever) would consider trash and nothing but advertising, and only 1,015,200 legitimate blogs that an average person may wish to read at some point. Divide 111,784,800 by 112,800,000 and you end up with the (incredibly fudged) statistic that 99.1% of blogs are utter trash. Add to the fact that not many people know what blogging is (again, try an impromptu-front-of-a-grocery-store survey), and PPP really does help to devalue blogging as a whole.
With all this fudged math, Mari knows this is horribly inaccurate, but it’s still an example of Jem’s point.
Anyone who has an idea of the actual statistics want to begin correcting Mari?
Blogging, Opinion, PayPerPost 
11 January 2008, 02:37
blogging statistics, mari can't guesstimate for crap, ppp adds to the illegitimacy of blogging, ppp devalues blogging, statisticsYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I didn’t follow the math (I never did like statistics) but I think you’ve got the general concept pretty spot on.
While blogging has exploded as a hobby in recent years, a lot of people either don’t know what it is (as you said) or are cynical of its benefits. There are lots of people who already believe that blogging devalues both the Internet and journalism. I think by stuffing blogs with reviews of products you’ve never used, or recommendations for insurance and plastic surgery at the grand old age of 16, you’re only feeding those cynics.
Even as a proud non PPPer I’ve had people turn around and say “wow, I thought this post was a PPP advert”. While that shows first and foremost that I should take up marketing and advertising (hehe), it also shows that people are being conditioned to think that any post that recommends a product is automatically fake. How can we as genuine bloggers ever possibly say anything nice again if people just assume that we’ve been paid to say it?
I have lots of other things to say about PPP but they come to my little brain in fits and bursts (short attention span).. so I’ll probably pop back and more to this at some point later
I got dizzy after Mari mentioned the teenybopper blogs =/
@Jem
Mari can’t believe she forgot mainstream journalism’s war on blogging! Yes, by advertising like this, people who do PPP are only further polluting what most professional journalists would call a pile of rubbish.
REALLY?! Mari is shocked (and should read comments more often…) Heh, you could probably make money hand over fist if you did.
Indeed, how can genuine review posts (for any product, be it web hosting, albums, books) be looked upon as worth something when people assume your writing is rubbish because you’re not writing for the New York Times?
Short attention span is a symptom of being an Internet user, Mari thinks.