Beyond the Box Score: Movin' On Up

by Justin Bopp on Mar 27, 2011 5:56 PM EDT in Site News

Beyond the Box Score Ranked #2 Baseball Blog By Technorati, #8 Sports Blog by Wikio.

Thanks to one or two of our more intrepid (attention seeking) contributors, it has come to my attention that Beyond the Box Score has moved up to the #8 sports blog in the country according to wikio, and all the way up to the #2 baseball blog according to Technorati for March. See:

:o What have you done? (enlarges)

What does it all mean?

I'm not sure, honestly. It could mean we're doing something right. Lots of interesting content, community interaction, pretty pictures, new analysis, research, authentic and thoughtful commentary, rankings...

Or it could mean we're doing something terribly wrong. After all, that poor pop princess, whatever her name is, has like 14 million hits for counting down to her favorite day (it's Friday, ...Friday, and after that it's Sat... sorry.). But I'd prefer the former. (Unless you want plastic nonsense! We can do that!)

No seriously, we at BTB owe a big thanks to all (both) of you! We have a long ways to go to reach our goal (interplanetary domination), but this is a fantastic start and it's in large part to your feedback, support, and comments. Thank you all so much. This is really a neat journey to see this little space on the web grow, and we have tons more great content coming your way as the season opens in just a few days:

First, look for the usual fantastic player, team, league, and historical analysis from our great writers, whether we're doing comparisons, rankings, or looking for ways a player might be better utilized.

Second, look for additional infographics, charts, interactive visuals, and other eye-violating experiences that show our love of baseball. We believe one way we can show how advanced analysis really does communicate easily is through a visual format, and we're not backing off now.

Third, look for increased opinion and editorials from our contributors. That's one thing we can do better at: we have the data, we have the analysis, and we have neat visual ways to see it contrasted against other data -- the natural next step is to make an informed opinion and case for doing something with that data. We're also going to take on some sort of media reviews, whether books or video games or other commentary around the sabersphere.

Last (and absolutely the most important), look for increased community interaction. We're holding contests, giving away stuff, putting quality fanposts on the front page, and something I'm extremely excited about -- game threads for nationally televised games. The first one goes up on opening day and I think you'll really appreciate the community we're growing. We have a ton of informed audience members and it'll be a great conversation. I hope you guys are as excited as we all are.

Here's a preview poster for Thursday's game thread:

See you there?

*Wikio and Technorati rankings compiled differently, but are a similar measure of "link juice."

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Comments

hmm

I thought Technorati ranked sites according to hits. But i thought there were some baseball sites on SBN that got more hits than you. Maybe Im wrong (on either or both of those thoughts).

"If I have asthma, they won't let me scuba. And if I can’t scuba, then what’s this all been about?? What am I working toward??"

"You look like you should be married to one of the San Diego Padres."

by Doghnut on Mar 27, 2011 5:59 PM EDT reply actions

Oh, and congrats

You guys have definitely entered my regular rotation of sites to check.

"If I have asthma, they won't let me scuba. And if I can’t scuba, then what’s this all been about?? What am I working toward??"

"You look like you should be married to one of the San Diego Padres."

by Doghnut on Mar 27, 2011 5:59 PM EDT up reply actions

Thanks Doghnut.

That’s right, they’re really not measuring hits at all, though one might note that usually comes with the territory. There’s no doubt that specific team blogs (hello tribalism and other communication theories I love) get a ton of traffic, but hopefully the point I was making (that the number of links we’re getting has increased in large part to community support) came through.

Since you made me check, it looks like Technorati actually has us ranked #6 overall for all sports blogs. But I’ll leave in the Wikio references for mutual confirmation. That’s pretty cool.

See Data Differently: Beyond the Box Score | @justinbopp
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by Justin Bopp on Mar 27, 2011 6:08 PM EDT up reply actions