Metafilter Sources

As part of my ongoing interest in Metafilter statistics, I was curious to see which sites Metafilter users link to the most.

From a complete dump of Metafilter's front-page post database back to July 1999 (thanks, Matt!), I extracted the unique domains linked from each entry and added them all up.

The Top 50 results are below, proving that the NewsFilter moniker isn't too far off. (Or you can view the entire list.)

Top 50 Metafilter Sources (View All...)

15 Comments (Add Yours)

Aug 6, 2004
5:15 PM

Stewart Butterfield wrote:

I'd be interested to see the intersection of the big list with a list of blogs (from blo.gs or technorati or something?). Ctrl-Fing around revealed kottke (63), waxy.org (24), sylloge.com (16) ...

Also, if you plotted the distribution on a graph, it'd seem less newsfilter-y, I think: the 1s start at position 8,333, but there are 27,173 entries.

Aug 6, 2004
5:38 PM

Andy Baio wrote:

Here's a chart of the results.

Aug 6, 2004
7:26 PM

Anonymous wrote:

what hte hell good is that chart as a png? give me a zoomable dataset so i can see some more information beyond "fuck, it drops off real fast"

Aug 6, 2004
8:30 PM

ericville wrote:

i can't imagine keeping a record of every MetaFilter post since 1999 (34,831 posts as of now? *whew*)

it's reassuring to see that it's the BBC who's getting the most hits out of all the other news sites, tho ;) ...thanks for the stats.

Aug 7, 2004
5:41 AM

Keith TTIKTDA wrote:

This makes sense, even without 'newsfilter'

Think about it. What websites are constantly updated, on a daily basis, with things worthy of notice by a community weblog?

News sites, news sites, and umm... news sites.

Random flash movies, strange musical endeavors, weird new blogs, all tend to have their own domains.

News articles, inherently, show up on news sites, which are posting them consistently.

In other words, 10 flash movies, will come from 10 domains.

But 10 incredible, world stoppingly important news stories, will all be linked from CNN.

Newsfilter nothin'. It's just the nature of the Internet.

Aug 7, 2004
7:47 AM

Andy Baio wrote:

The chart isn't supposed to be a good way to browse the dataset (there are over 27,000 records). It's just meant to show that the data follows a power law distribution.

Aug 8, 2004
10:13 PM

david wrote:

Looks like I need to start updating my bookmarks :)

Aug 9, 2004
7:55 AM

Simon wrote:

Interesting stuff. As a Brit, I'm quite proud to have two of our news sources up in the top 10, even more that the BBC is no. 1(ish). What does this mean in terms of Metafilter's readership's nationalities or political leaning? (esp. since the Guardian is a leftie, even in the UK...)

Aug 12, 2004
10:00 AM

l y s o l wrote:

Are you just going to ignore the fact that the number one link is to metafilter itself? Power law curves are interesting, and all, but the real story is metafilter users' self-importance.

Aug 12, 2004
10:11 AM

Andy Baio wrote:

It has less to do with self-importance, and more to do with referring back to older Metafilter threads. Whenever someone updates an older story or refers to a past thread, it's a link to Metafilter.

Aug 13, 2004
3:42 PM

Anonymous wrote:

Not to mention every Double post callout...

Aug 22, 2004
5:57 PM

mark wrote:

heh... apple.com ranks higher than microsoft.com

Sep 8, 2004
12:53 AM

dabitch wrote:

heh, go beeb!

Aug 3, 2006
4:33 PM

mrbene wrote:

BBC is prolly one of the highest through sheer laziness - default Firefox install has "Latest Headlines" RSS feed that is BBC news exclusively, and if you can find it there, why look anywhere else?

Aug 29, 2011
4:44 PM

Apple fan wrote:

I wonder what the list look like these days...

Metafilter Sources

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