Wait a minute…Michelle Malkin is number 5? WTF??!!??

Isn’t Hot Air and Michelle Malkin the same thing?

Trust me, she wouldn’t rank that high if she looked like Susan Boyle.

Woo-Hoo! Here’s a wish that FDL gets to number one!

Think Progress used to be a daily stop for me. No more. No veal pen organizations get my traffic regularly.

Clearly, I am not alone. For all the bleating and whining about Jane Hamsher and FDL, it seems like a lot of blogistan is with us.

That’s the thing. I have to hold back. I almost typed something very, very antifeminist about MM and links to rather naughty sites.

That’s pretty telling — our site and Plum Line’s are about the only lefty ones that aren’t either treading water or hemorrhaging readers.

Congrats Gregg, props to everyone!

That’s a difference between us and them: Our heroines don’t have to look like cheerleaders with Botox addictions.

Which is not to say that our heroines aren’t gorgeous–they are! Inside and out.

Yeah, I hear a lot of that bleating and whining at Talking Points Memo, probably the most centrist infested site in the left blogosphere. They’re still upset about Jane making common cause with Grover. And I don’t even see TPM on the list.

We’re even ahead of the Orangutans! Sweet!

Congratulations to all of you in the back room.

Proof that it is still the content, the good reporting. that attracts serious readers.

Thanks from this late comer.

(My secret is that I still read TPM, but I never, never, never read the comments anymore. Just the original reporting like the muckraker.)

Keep striving to be # 1. Maybe then the U.S. will have a chance.

I thought the same thing. They’re different. Ed Morrisey and Allahpundit are the key knuckledraggers on Hot Air. MM has her primary blogspace at MMDotCom.

So true. But I won’t name any names– I’ve noticed that liberal women can be a little sensitive about compliments about their looks. They just want to be considered strong and smart, and they seem to think that looks shouldn’t be a factor.

This is good news as FDL is a very good blog.

cleavage

Great job, guys.

We have the finest writers on the tubes. I marvel every day at their ability and skill. The commenters are smart, informed and often very funny. This is definitely the place to be. Thanks to all – you make my day.

I was looking at some of the ratings. HuffPo is like the Incredible Hulk. You cannot even flame them. But no Sludge on the list, I mean Drudge? And drug-addled Rushbo gets lots of traffic.

We must thank those keyboard commandos at DKos for more traffic. They are visiting here to monitor and to try to get ahead of FDL. “Recon at FDL to keep up with their memes and maybe get ahead of them”. I know what you are saying, LOL.

Here are some links rating websites from another post, from Adam503.

http://www.alexa.com/

http://www.quarkbase.com/

http://www.compete.com/

http://www.quantcast.com/

They are right, of course. Looks shouldn’t be a factor.

I think a big part of it is the FDL policy of treating commenters with respect, and trying to stay on topic in the comments. Comments can be my favorite part of the blog experience.

I was looking a another BLOG today, one you mentioned that has fallen in ranking, and I noticed that the commenters are not respectful of each other and there was a lot of piling on of certain commenters.

After all this time, that stuff does not amuse me anymore.

Think Progress used to put out many articles a day too. Now, it’s just a few. I often forget to stop there out of sheer boredom.

I’m surprised Wonkette isn’t on the list, just for sheer fun. Gregg, do you know where they rank?

Thanks to you–and to everyone that helps make this place so vibrant.

I noticed that Drudge wasn’t on the list too. Kos just wrote something recently about how DK and Drudge were kings of the ‘sphere because that’s where surfers spent the most time.

my take is that it’s right wingers looking for opposition research.
and lazy-newsies looking for a scoop.

I think it’s great news that FDL is moving up! Wonderful to hear. My other favorite blog is Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, everyone should read Greenwald’s writing, he posts one amazingly insightful post after another, usually at least one every weekday, sometimes two or three and sometimes he posts on the weekends too. FDL readers should work to get Greenwald into the top ten. He’s currently in the 42nd spot, which isn’t bad, but his writing is so good and so relevant he should be in the top ten. That’s my thought on the issue.

I forgot to mention the websites that we dare not speak their names
prisonplanet.com and infowars. Because if we mentioned them we would be called “firebirthers”. These are also popular.

Awesome to see us in the top 10 despite getting rolled and dissed by mainstream dems and progressive blogs. Says a lot about the rest of the country too.

Reassuring to know we aren’t talking to ourselves inside a lead lined closet.

Don’t forget to let Christy know.

Congratulations to FDL! As Twain put it in her comment @ 20:

This is definitely the place to be.

Quality over quantity.

spent the most time

Don’t know about DK but with Drudge it prolly has something to do with the reading level of the readers.

Wonkette is 91st.

Bet the Kos people are going to have a snit-fit today. :)

Great news, but very well-deserved. Way to go, Firedogs!

LOL!! Have you ever seen an episode of Beavis and Butthead where Butthead tries to read?

Guess where they’ll go to piss and moan.

I believe the correct phrase is “bring ‘em on.”

Nope. Have never seen an episode, just clips.

One is more likely to get a knowledgeable comment on a post one makes at FDL than at any other site. There is a great deal of past and current political memory and insight and analysis – not all of which I agree with, but all of which I can respect as honest opinion.

Huff Po is a larger site with NYT like coverage of everything – and with NYT like non-experts and pretend experts writing articles – and commenting.

FDL is the only site for serious left of center political discourse.

So congratulations to Jane – may her fortunes, and the site ranking, continue to grow and prosper.

Congrats! It’s nice to have some good news for a change!

Over the last 17 months, FDL has tried very hard to adhere to the same principles we held during the Bush years, separating policy from personality, welcoming people with divergent views, and favoring results over rhetoric. We’ve also tried to offer a home to both information and activism that could take this quadrant of the new media universe past simply writing about the change we wanted to a place where we could advance it.

Hear, Hear!

I know FDL is now top of the blogs for me.

While places like KOS, TPM, and Plum Line become establishment talking point outlets, and thereby more centrist, I count on FDL more and more for your honesty and work.

Writers here are far superior to front pagers at Daily Kos. And, as far as I can tell, Daily Kos has been infested by paid operatives who dominate comments and make real discussion difficult/impossible. I’ve found fewer and fewer reasons to bother going over there.

Proud to be in the Lake

Beavis and Butthead read the phone book (@:35):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wgm8E34Qm0

The fact that we were willing to put principle over tribal affiliation gave us credibility with lots of people that led directly to the rise in both links and traffic.

It’s remarkable that people who see any trans-partisan alliance over issues as a betrayal do so in defense of a President who campaigned on — bipartisanship.

Either he didn’t mean it, or they didn’t think that he meant it, or both. Either way, it’s hypocritical to claim it’s a virtue when Obama does it, but treason when anyone else does it. There is zero public support for that position — so they’re free to keep making it as long as they want.

impressive – congratulations!

Does this up the eBay value of my FDL ceramic tile coaster and T-shirt, circa 2005? :~)

I’m not surprised with FDL’s increasing popularity. My response when I visit the other lefty blogs on the list, after skimming the articles and diaries for a few minutes is, [Yawn] Booooooring!
Never think that about FDL. There are always interesting pieces to read with new facts and insights. The only place to be for the non-brain-dead, IMO.

Those Wikio people must be radical left teabagging fascists. *s*

I’ve found fewer and fewer reasons to bother going over there

It is cheap entertainment on a slow news day. I do not think paid operatives are necessary to make DKos a bunch of shills. They would shill quite well anyway. But to be honest there have been a lot of good posts there. But not so much recently. Anyone can post a possibly slanderous attack anywhere. But some of their slanderous attacks against FDL are certainly encouraged by K-street lobbyists.

Bunch o’ firebaggers.

(That’s what they call us at TPM).

:-)

I’m a walking, typing bellows. Fanning the flames at the Lake.

Well they are professional journalists after all.

David Dayen has a fresh cross-post up: Field To Replace John Paul Stevens Narrows

They may be but they aren’t nearly as good as our writers. Many newspapers might still be in business if they had writers like ours who actually inform the public.

Remember the battle of Haloscan!

Most of the slanderous attacks against FDL over at Daily Kos struck me as noise intended to distract people from the important work that was and is being done at FDL and to put Jane on the defensive, but she never took the bait.

I never read those, but isn’t the fact that Jane and FDL is getting talked about more and more on blogs (check this article from Tapped )http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=some_of_my_best_friends_are_tea_partiers) an indication of the rising effectiveness of this blog? If it were no big shakes no one would care to write about it.

seems like ancient history in blog-years…

the term of endearment at our house has long been Charles Foster Jane ’cause she keeps movin’, buildin’, and innovatin’ . totally bitchin to see it vindicated by these numbers

oh, and Big Orange and all those “fierce pragmatists” can suck it !

uh, one little contrarian note: Sargent gets an asterisk next to his “original reporting” – he did join in on the HCR is a major progressive achievement fest.

It’s not the writing or the reporting. It’s the quality and character of the lurkers :-)

I agree. Attacks against suggest that those who want to block real reform or lower expectations after the election are worried about FDL’s influence. I have worried about the attacks at other sites (however lame most of them are) going unanswered, though I think Jane’s done well not to swing at an attack unless she has a purpose.

TPM just had a post saying it had 79 % more traffic this year than last. Sounds like they were comparing March 2010 over March 2009, and the health care debate spiked the numbers.

D-day’s work compiling the list of votes on health care certainly drove up traffic to this site last month. He should get the employee of the month parking spot this April.

Viva FDL! Best damn blog, period.

Yes, which means they’re much more likely to be allowed to touch the hem of the garment of whichever political idol they’re fanboying for at the moment. Oooh, access! Shiny!

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=some_of_my_best_friends_are_tea_partiers
I had to fix your link. This is interesting as an example of Pure Veal. But it is also let me call it, disinformation. It is also factually incorrect. And slandering Naomi Wolff, now I am gettin’ riled up.

I have seen other articles quite similar, call it quiet slander of the “left”. The “left” being people who do not write $10,000 checks to The American Prospect. I am a self appointed media critic and this is plagiarism of The Onion although without the humor.

Hell, Republicans on the Hill were saying (off-record of course) that they felt he had the most authoritative whip counts.

We need some sort of flamming tea bag graphic for the site.

ZOMG.

Have to agree.

Congrats to Jane and crew. Thanks for putting it up Gregg.

As blogs such as the Daily Kos complete the transformation from progressive to pro-Obama-water-carrying websites, their influence declines.

Congrats!!!

I’ve got a couple of questions about what “counts” in these tallies:

**are all of the loci considered “FDL”? I.e., when I visit TBogg and Marcy, is that a “hit” for FDL?

**do “internal transfers” count? Again, if I go from the FDL front page directly to TBogg or Marcy, is that a “hit” or whatever “counts”? [If not, I'm gonna change my bookmarks and go there from somewhere that "counts."]

**does it “count” when I e-mail a link to an FDL diary to a friend? Does it matter how I send the link [using the internal methods of sending, or copying and pasting to my e-mail], or does the “count” only occur when my recipient clicks on the link and visits?

Please note I’m not trying to or encouraging “scamming” of numbers [as I suspect some other sites might]; I’m just trying to get the best reflection of activity that actually occurs.

Again, congrats. SO well deserved! [And perhaps our collective desertion of TPM, Think Progress et al. will get noticed. Nothing, it appears, will make a dent in HuffPo's traffic.]

PS – who ARE some of these “top” sites? I’ve never visited the CBS & ABC ones, and never heard of “The Corner,” “Gateway Pundit,” “NewBusters” or many of the others.

Terrific news. Congrats to all who helped make this site the great place it is today!

HuffPo owes its number one spot to star power, celebrity bloggers, and a good deal of pop-culture and entertainment stuff. Today they had a slide show on famous women in “skin-tight cat suits,” not that I bothered to check it out. I don’t think any of the competition is doing such stuff.

here ya go :D

Jane has a fresh cross-post already in progress: New Media Models in Action: “Old Guy on a Plane” Fails Again

You are too damn funny!

Lovely news!

Just came here from talking to a friend who asked me how i stayed so well informed during a conversation which began with Health (ha) Care and meandered through politics, financial topics…. I told her FDL is my main source of information these days.

I basically turned the TV off a few months ago . Can’t listen to NPR anymore. I read the Times every other day, not every day like i used to. Have ditched the other blogs as they re(veal)ed themselves during health care.

You are the best. Thanks to this whole community. Many many thanks!

hey Gregg – it’s like 90 minutes later . . . and it just dawned on me The Politico isn’t in the Top 20

I know, I know, it’s just Pool Boy and Harris sucking up their patron’s cash, but . . . bwaahaaaahaaaaaa !

Corporate media doesn’t consider it a blog methinks. Ain’t no bloggers gettin’ on Washington Week as regular chair warmers. They’re a gen-yew-wine news org, dontcha know.

I’d like to think that FDL’s growth is the result of contributors, moderators, support staff and all the commenters and readers

What? I’m only here for the beer!

You are too polite. I would have written wankers instead of

pro-Obama-water-carrying

sigh, you’re prolly right – although look at all the TradMed sites on the list – CBS, ABC, CNN, NYT

of course we havent seen the numbers yet for the Wankers With Prosimian Commenters category

Those tradmed placements are a little surprising, although when you look at them they do seem to keep to the tabloid motif common to a lot of that roster.

The other interesting thing is the low placement of DK. Having been a participant over there from the first months (the Movable Type days) I would suggest that the site became dominant in no small part because of its superior usability and technological adaptivity. They really twisted the Scoop platform into a swan, and in doing fostered a community of participants.
Most other political blogs are still mostly in the shadow of DK-Scoop, which is unfortunate (esp as the DK4 reboot rolls out). But then a lot of them aren’t looking for “community”, just a top-down audience. Good luck with that.

I hope FDL is able to adapt it’s tech to it’s new reputation and growing community, without getting sidetracked with “friending”, cliquing and other dubious “social media” constructs.

FDL is assembling a superior team of contributors and because of their excellent work this site has replaced a number of high-noise/low-signal sites on my news crawl. I’m glad to see some objective metrics describing what most of us here already know: There is profound need for effective progressive political analysis and discourse, and FDL is emerging as the web destination of choice.

I like FDL because it most closely represents my way of thinking, does a lot of good original reporting (Marcy Wheeler being the most prominent), is gutsy, and is willing to align itself with the Democratic Party when that’s appropriate and blast it as a worthless pack of corporate suck-ups when that’s appropriate.

I used to go to Daily Kos until Kos made his famous “Fuck Nader and fuck anyone who voted for him” post. We share the same goals and should be able to disagree civilly, but that just infuriated me, and I’ve rarely gone back since.

DKos needs a shakeup. Nothing but Obamacrats there any more, no one with any policy cred. Just a bunch of DLC cheerleaders who are for any sellout Rahmbo comes up with. Watch them suddenly come out against a CPFA in the financial regulation overhaul once Obama decides to sell us out again in order to get the thing passed. There’s a pattern of mindless cheerleading instilling itself over at the Big Orange these days.

The fact that we were willing to put principle over tribal affiliation gave us credibility with lots of people that led directly to the rise in both links and traffic.

It’s remarkable that people who see any trans-partisan alliance over issues as a betrayal do so in defense of a President who campaigned on — bipartisanship.

Either he didn’t mean it, or they didn’t think that he meant it, or both. Either way, it’s hypocritical to claim it’s a virtue when Obama does it, but treason when anyone else does it. There is zero public support for that position — so they’re free to keep making it as long as they want.

Perfectly said. I look to HuffPo mainly for general news (ex:good early pic from the Chilean earthquake) and Simon Johnson, Salon.com for Glenn Greenwald, and FDL for everything else (esp. of political or economic substance).

What drew me to TPM was their coverage of the Franken election and recount. I still check it out here and there, but yeah, I’ve noticed a particular slant in some of their posts. In addition to HuffPost and FDL, some of my other favorites are C&L, Salon, Bradblog and Rawstory.

Congrats to FDL for sticking with progressive principles. “Firebaggers”? Firedogs!

As Jim Hightower says, “The only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos.”

So, how about “Yellow Stripers” or “Dead Armadillos” for so-called “centrists”?

- Tom

heh

The reichwingers use code words, we can too. “Armadillos” sounds better than “Dead Armadillos” but we’d know what it meant. Or “Striped Armadillos” for the poor creature painted over by the stripe painting machine.

Over the last 17 months, FDL has tried very hard to adhere to the same principles we held during the Bush years, separating policy from personality, welcoming people with divergent views, and favoring results over rhetoric. We’ve also tried to offer a home to both information and activism that could take this quadrant of the new media universe past simply writing about the change we wanted to a place where we could advance it.

Bravo! In the little bit of time I’ve spent at FDL (which first entered my radar screen during the “healthcare” “debate”), it’s been clear that this is one of the most serious, thoughtful and open-minded communities on the web. I’m pleasantly shocked, shocked! to see you jump so high.
This day and age screams out for creative, open-minded, and compassionate thinking, and the dominant behaviors in the blogosphere simply mimic the dominant behaviors in our society… which are certainly NOT creative, open-minded and compassionate.

As an open-minded Green who has not felt at home at any big so-called progressive website, it’s becoming clear to me that FDL is the real-deal venue that does justice to what “progressive” really means.

And I think there are parallels in the non-profit and political organizing spheres and we need to learn these lessons well. MoveOn.org was built by the grassroots but it is firmly in the hands of Democratic Party establishment apologists. Center for American Progress is doing the media+politics game, to benefit the Democratic Party establishment. Would love to hear more about your thoughts on advancing the change you want to see! I’ve got some of my own ideas and I’ll try to think of ways of getting more active here towards building.

Huzzah and kudos, and an incredibly warm THANK YOU for all you’re doing!
Bravo! In the little bit of time I’ve spent at FDL (which first entered my radar screen during the “healthcare” “debate”), it’s been clear that this is one of the most serious, thoughtful and open-minded communities on the web. I’m pleasantly shocked, shocked! to see you jump so high.
This day and age screams out for creative, open-minded, and compassionate thinking, and the dominant behaviors in the blogosphere simply mimic the dominant behaviors in our society… which are certainly NOT creative, open-minded and compassionate.
As an open-minded Green who has not felt at home at any big so-called progressive website, it’s becoming clear to me that FDL is the real-deal venue that does justice to what “progressive” really means.

And I think there are parallels in the non-profit and political organizing spheres and we need to learn these lessons well. MoveOn.org was built by the grassroots but it is firmly in the hands of Democratic Party establishment apologists. Center for American Progress is doing the media+politics game, to benefit the Democratic Party establishment. Would love to hear more about your thoughts on advancing the change you want to see! I’ve got some of my own ideas and I’ll try to think of ways of getting more active here towards building.

Huzzah and kudos, and an incredibly warm THANK YOU for all you’re doing!

The integrity thing is what did it for me. And ethics. AND outstanding info/analysis. Along with commenters that are honest, full of even more info/analysis, and nearly always respectful. (And even more cool: Many times those who might be having a tough day and backpedal on that respect stuff…come back and apologize! Does it get any better than that?!)
So thanks, Jane, thanks, Gregg, thanks David, Marcy, etc. for the tone you’ve set. Am so glad I checked you out. And thanks, FDL community, for enriching that tone.
A solid place for me to hang.

Yes, I agree with you 100%. Glenn Greenwald’s columns are almost beyond belief. He is so right there, right on, covering things almost no one else dares cover…with analysis, perspective, insight that’s top notch. Without a doubt, he’s a daily read for me. (And even on those days he doesn’t post something – which is rare, btw – I re-read previous columns, because I always get something more out of them.)
Thanks for mentioning him, unlguy. He not only deserves a higher spot – but this country would be far better off if the rest of the populace gave him a read through on a regular basis.
P.S. This does not take anything away from FDL. You are both – superb.