3 Most Used Social Proof Based On 3 Most Popular Blogs From 30 Most Popular Blogs On The Net.

Recently, I had read a blog post by Dan Zarella on The Importance of Social Proof for your blog acceptance and perception based on his conclusion on a study done by Washington Post.  His conclusion on 3 mode of social proof caught my attention,

1. Prominently display your feedburner count
2. Use the “Recent Comments” widget
3. Display the number of comments for each post

Based on this 3 mode of social proof,  I had choose 3 most popular blog from 30 most popular blogs for the month of January 2009 as featured in eBizMBA. We will see if all of this 3 mode of social proof is incorporated in this blog.

Gizmodo.com

Gizmodo display their number of feed subscribers at the middle of their left sidebar.  At the time of writing, they have about 4,776 subscribers.

They also shown and display prominently all comments received by each post.  While Gizmodo does not use the most recent comments, but they display how many times each post had been view.  At their front page, the latest comment is display for each post featured at the front page.

At the individual post, they also shown the numbers of replies for each comments gave by their readers.  The arrangement seem to be the highest numbers of replies first followed by the less numbers of replies.

So to sum-up, social proof used at Gizmodo:

1. Subscribers count
2. A variation of total number of comments for each post
3. An additional social proof, number of replies for each comments at each individual post.

TMZ.com

TMZ.com use some variation of Recent Comment widget at their right sidebar.  At the point of writing, there were 8 most commented posts listed at this section which they call as, you guess,  “Most Commented On”.  Slightly below this. you will see, the “Most Popular Posts” and “Recent Comments”.  All articles featured at the front page will  shown their number of comments at the bottom left of each post.

For each individual post, the number of comments received is shown at the bottom right corner.  Just a normal comments setting here where each comments appear in accordance by date.  No apparent conversation reply mode like Gizmodo.

Each post will show all their related post in a list form at the bottom each post before the comment list.

In summary, TMZ.com used the following mode of social proof,

1. A variation of recent comment widget
2. Most popular post

Endgadget.com

Endgadget list few of their latest post at the front page.  Each post appear at the front page will shown the number of comments received and their permalink.

However for each individual post, other than the number of comments received and their permalink, Endgadget.com like Gadget.com, have conversation comment mode.  A reader can reply to comment post by another reader.  They also add the vote function for each reply or comment gave by the reader.

In summary Endgadget.com use the following social proof at their blog,

1. The number of comment received by each post
2. A variation of rating system for each reply or comments given by each reader

The General Conclusion

Based on these findings, all top three blogs use 2 of 3  social media tool mentioned above. Not all of them show their feedburner subcriber but some show their subscriber number.  But interesting to note also, 2 of 3 of these blogs use some form of conversation in their comment section.  If this can be equate to social proof, then this features which as standard featured for WordPress 2.7 will be very usefull.

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Tagged as: blogs, front page, social proof, washington post