Self contained island (of smut and fandombrains?)

[proggrrl]

Today I'm looking at this graphical depiction of the blogosphere, that seleneheart found in the current issue of Discovery Magazine.

What really jumps out of this to me is that LJ (#3), "smut" peddlers (#5), and sports bloggers (#6) seem to constitute little isolated "islands" apart from the rest.  This is fascinating - how do we feel about being on our own little island?  Also interesting because my travels in LJ fandom have led to a lot of, erm...smut.  So are sports and sex the only things that the rest of the blogosphere cannot deal with?

There are plenty of external (ie, non-LJ) links in my LJ.  I think of this as a blog with some excellent social-network abilities.  But this graph shows that most LJ'ers are keeping their links very internal.

Comments

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Hee. I like that map. I'm totally a culprit of keeping my links internal. Honestly, I think some part of me finds the world beyond LJ a little dizzying in scope, whereas LJ feels safe and manageable. ;) I laugh at myself for that, and it's not 100% true because I do link off LJ sometimes and I have other blogs I read, etc. But yeah, LJ feels like the cozy home sofa you curl up on when a storm's on outside--you can watch out the window but feel pleasantly insulated. ;)

[proggrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah I love geekblogmaps, they are cool. Sometimes tho I wonder about their veracity. I'm gonna take this one at face value since I know all their reference points (Kos, Malkin, sports & pornblogs) to be real traffic generators.

As someone who just stumbled into LJ this past winter, after years and years of blogaddiction, I can certainly relate to the idea of LJ as its own little (fandom?) island. My bigger question is: are most of LJ's userbase here for the fandom? The fanfic? The smut and/or slash in particular? It would be interesting to find that out.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Don't know, but I remember last year there was a bit of a to-do about who the typical LJ-er was ... but I think that was more an age issue--the argument was the average LJ-er was older than the teen-twenties market LJ claimed.

The Lj format works very well for fandom purposes, I think, just as imeem is becoming a hub for the vidding community.