Blogs. They're either what's right or what's wrong with the Internet specifically and the collective media consciousness in general -- depending on whom you ask. Me, I kinda like blogs, but then I like to read and I like to write, and really, is it much more complicated than that? I'm the kind of person who's constantly finding a new favorite medium. But at about two years, this is the longest relationship I've had with any one in particular. Oh, I still like to flirt with printing, photography, audio and video. But if I'm a media technology whore, then the blogosphere is the abusive pimp I just keep coming back to.
In that spirit, I'd like to present my So Best: Jackson's Top Ten Posts, If Measured Quantitatively by Pageviews Logged and With a Chronologically Fore-weighted Data Sample. Since I get to use the first person singular, I figured I'd go all the way and only link to my own posts. It's both geeky and narcissistic, just like me (which should be no surprise if you can find my byline and read between the lines of the collective voice). Sure, I could have gone through all my archives and picked my favorites by title, but that would have taken forever. And what are blogs if not yet another manifestation of instant gratification enabled by advanced technology?
The run-on title alludes to the fact that the whole methodology here is kind of skewed, so before we begin, a little statistical context must be discussed. Because of an upgrade, I only have data since approximately mid-September. Any posts that made the top ten from before that could have had considerably more hits. In general, though, hits to individual posts come in a pretty steady trickle from Google. So posts in January would have been weighted heavier, regardless. What's funny is that the top single post from all authors is Jon's about Britney Spears' pregnancy, and editorially, I encouraged Jon to write it specifically to see if we really saw a traffic boost. Okay, enough stats porn -- after the jump I present the full list.
Photo of ugly Al and nailbiting Gavin from the Current TV Kickoff party.
10. The New de Young Building -- One of the top queries that lands at SFist from Google is "dede wilsey". I probably have her son Sean to thank (and I'm sure plenty of that traffic goes to Rita's post about his book). Not to mention all the media coverage her new museum garnered. This piece was a little too easy to write, and maybe too long by half. Probably because I took so many notes. Still, more fun than press day was literally breaking into the museum, with some fellow bloggers no less, on that all-night opening weekend.
9. Ballin' Bay Bloggers Beset with Bling -- This is a really interesting post, and not just because it's about a hi-tech toilet seat. Really, this post is about a kind of ham-handed sales pitch by a Silicon Valley marketer trying to cash in on blog hype (man was there a lot of that early last year) by pitching products to A-list tech bloggers. It was just too deliciously ironic that the first product to undergo rigorous blogger testing was the Brondell Swash. Lo and behold, Brondell got in touch with us, and MattyMatt ended up writing a fantastic review (thumbs up!). Recently, I found them the focus of an AP article on America's changing attitudes towards electronic bidets, and got to gloat just a bit. Good to see the hype machine still works.
8. The Art of Advertising -- Here's another relatively recent post that struck a chord. Krissy forwarded a note from Chryde of Parisist about this ad, the filming of which was all over the internet. I had already posted a link to the finished video, but Chryde came through with all sorts of great info. My feeling was that this would get a lot of traffic, but I admit I dropped the ball by not putting it up fast enough. I find it intriguing that all the people who find this are going to get a big lump of my personal history being a punk little PA at a film production office.
7. Live Blogging The Gavster: Municipal Wifi -- Now this, this was fun to write. I'd been following this story passively in the media since Tom Ammiano introduced a plan for municipal broadband. It was one of the things that endeared me to Gavin. But municipal broadband became a public-private partnership, free became affordable, and now it's just a big old clusterf**k of secretive, hardball San Francisco politics, with everyone in City Hall wanting to cash in on the political and financial capital of letting someone like Google blanketing The City in wireless. Sigh. Still, always entertaining to liveblog (and poke fun at GavvyGav).
6. Wanted: Penises. Pubic Hair Optional. -- Where to start? Well, first of all, penises are very popular. But 'penis' isn't exactly in the top search queries that lead people to SFist. Considering that the opportunity to model one's schlong passed last March, I'm wondering what magical combination of words is triggering all this traffic? "healthy penis"? "people with penises"? "you have to be 18"?
5. Bay Area Blog Pulse (10/14) -- Here's another perplexing candidate. I started writing the Blog Pulse for a bunch of reasons. I don't like to source stories from the newspaper, especially the Chronicle. They get plenty of traffic. But all over the Bay Area are bloggers writing really interesting stuff, especially about technology and politics. It's meant as a bloggy supplement to your daily newspaper reading. For some reason, this one proved to be particularly popular, and I'm guessing it's because the first paragraph is almost entirely devoted to marijuana policy.
4. SFist Party Crash -- East Bay Rats' Fight Night -- I was rather happy to see that this made the cut. This was probably the single greatest party I'd ever been to. It was a participatory three ring circus in a dilapidated West Oakland warehouse. There was no pretension, the aggression was all inside the boxing ring, and the music (my introduction to the Extra Action Marching Band) was spectacular. I'm still kicking myself that I didn't get any pictures of the flag girls when they entered on the car with the stripper pole. It didn't hurt to get a link from Jalopnik.
3. Fat Tone Killed in Possible Retaliation -- In the "Lamest Regional Pairing Ever Embroiled in a Hip-Hop Beef" category, WTF is up with a 'rivalry' between the Yay Area and KC? And why does the entire Internet seem to be on one side or the other? I ended up closing down the comments on Rita's Mac Dre post shortly after Tone was shot, and a few weeks later had to turn the comments off on this post, too. Either there's a lot more thug life ballers representing up in the blogosphere than I figured, or there's an assload of sixteen year olds who seem to think anyone cares what they have to say in the matter. I wonder...
2. Is That a Banana in Your Pocket? -- What's funny is that this was actually kind of an afterthought to a much more in-depth, detailed piece about the Billboard Liberation Front. Basically, after covering the defacement of a Viacom billboard with a piece of art that poked fun at McDonalds, I ended up following the crew of rowdy culture jammers to the Zeitgeist. (What was I going to do, throw back a few with the Viacom and McDonalds execs and get their side of the story?) Jingles said he had like 5000 of these banana phone cozies sitting around, and I figured I might help him move some units. So I forwarded the link to the kids at Gizmodo, they liked it, and traffic for the day topped 10,000 sessions (at the time, it was a banner event -- now SFist has that kind of traffic daily). But the 'So Best' moment? Dave Barry himself linked to the post on his blog.
1. Barely Legal Coeds in the Buff to Help Tsunami Victims -- It was just this time last year that everyone at SFist, and around the world, were thinking of how we could help the victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. I posted about every local group, memorial, benefit and personal experience I could find. Of course, which post ends up topping the list? The one about the charity calendar with photos of discretely posed, barely legal, nekkid Stanford students. So the top 'So Best' moment? Realizing that the every one of you in the blogosphere is a pervert, but a pervert with a heart of gold.
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Ha! So our little Britney baby stunt worked. Maybe we should post about the l'il Brangelina baby that's on the way.
That's a nice roundup, and a lot of good writing too. And thanks for the Blog Pulse links over the last months. I loved every one of them.