Last week we posted about the rise of Billboard 100-like lists on the Internet. One of the lists we pointed to in that original post was Todd Andrlik’s (And for short) The Power 150. We caught up with Todd just before the weekend to get more details on how/why The Power 150 came to be
Bite: First off, tell us how you came up with the idea for The Power 150.
And: The idea for the Power 150 came from a unique combination of inspiration and boredom. I discovered Marketingfacts.nls list of the top 100 Dutch-language marcom blogs and was really impressed with its resourcefulness. Then, during a week-long Christmas vacation, I was bored and decided to attempt an English-language version.
Bite: How long did it take you to get the site up and running? What was the process?
And: From start to launch, it probably took me about 50 hours over the course of my vacation week. At first, I determined the algorithm and spent a good chunk of time compiling a giant pool of marketing blogs. Then, I hand-calculated every blogs ranking in Excel. From there, I designed the site and added the content. Since then, several bloggers have suggested sites to me, so the list has grown and continues to grow today. About two weeks ago, RSS expert Marjolein Hoekstra contacted me out of the blue and offered to help turn the Power 150 from a static link library into a living, breathing list and a much more resourceful tool. You can now search and subscribe by keyword, browse the combined River of News feed, or openly explore feed-to-feed. The subscribe to your search feature is very cool in that you can grab the RSS URL for your custom search and instantly see when your keyword is mentioned by blogs in the Power 150.
Bite: Tell us a little bit about how the rankings are done. What’s the calculation? Why use only Bloglines subscriptions as opposed to other RSS readers?
And: I recommend reading my original post announcing the Power 150 for details about the algorithm. The comments also shed light on the reasoning.
Bite: The site currently lists US-only marketing blogs–are there any plans to expand beyond the United States?
And: Unfortunately, I don’t know code, so as I started researching and developing I found that I needed to concentrate only on US-based blogs for the sake of time and sanity. If I was an expert coder, I would have automated the Power 150 ranking algorithm and included all English-language marketing blogs. If you know any coders who want to help out, please send them my way.
Bite: What kind of traffic is the site currently seeing?
And: According to my server’s basic stat package, the toddand.com/power150 page received 5900 hits in January. The Power 150 launched on January 11.
Bite: Not bad! What’s been the most surprising aspect in this process? Any unexpected outcomes?
And: I don’t know about surprising, but the most exciting thing is the fact that something I created is connecting bloggers. Several dozen bloggers have emailed me to say thanks because they have used the Power 150 to discover many new blogs.
Bite: Anything else to add?
And: Nothing really.
Bite: Thanks Todd.
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About the Author
Trevor Jonas is an account director at Bite Communications, a worldwide public relations firm with offices in London, New York, San Francisco and Stockholm. An avid observer of the social media revolution, he can often be found posting about his favorite topics–PR, marketing and news consumption habits–on the Bite blog.
