paidContent - For Your Inner Drudge: Its Links Anthropology, Dissected

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Rafat Ali

paidContent.org
Friday, July 10, 2009; 3:29 PM

A fascinating study in the latest issue of tech culture webjournal First Monday, about the link economy, so to speak, on DrudgeReport over the last six years, and some insights into how and what it aggregates. The conclusion of of the study is that it "relies heavily on wire services and obscure news outlets to find the small stories that will break large tomorrow and is highly dependant on the mainstream 'old media' sites it draws from." A bit obvious one, if you ask me. But then, you can dig in to find some gems like how MyWay.com is the second most linked to site on it (and the only reason why anyone would ever go to IAC-owned MyWay, btw), after Breitbart.com (Matt's progeny so understandable). And that the site updates its links 67 times a day, and the "links" aren't a huge fan of Sarah Palin, surprisingly. And this one, personally, is the most insightful: From 2005 to 2007, the site experienced a nearly 20 percent increase in its vocabulary size, decreasing again in 2008. "Bush" is the most popular noun on the site for the period..yeah, that was a hard one to guess.