Index measures mainstream media popularity on blogs

Blog content aggregator and search site Technorati will soon release its Technorati Attention Index, which measures the incidence of blogs linking to mainstream media sites during the last 30 days. Traditional news sources such as The New York Times, CNN and the BBC are leaders, most likely indicating the high influence of politics and the economy, versus, as examples, entertainment and technology reporting.
However, the top spot is held by YouTube. Regardless of the subject matter, user-defined and -generated content rules the blogosphere. According to a 2008 JupiterResearch study, blogs are important factors when making purchasing decisions, with over half of blog readers saying blogs played a role in the crucial moment that they decided to move forward with a purchase.

The same study reports that 40% of blog readers took action after clicking an ad on a blog. Would a portion of that ad traffic continue through to the media sites linked to by those blogs? Would a better return on investment result from advertising on mainstream news sites or on the blogs themselves? These are the questions professional online marketers will have to answer.

Here is the top five:
YouTube
The New York Times
BBC News
CNN.com
MSN

Click here to check out the rest of the top 50.