Objectivism: activist cultural change Objectivism objectivist blogs Objectivists objectivsm online objetivist community
by Danielle Morrill
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Who’s Actually Getting Read in Objectivism (Online)
Editor’s Note: Thank you to those publications who’ve reached out with concerns about the accuracy of these numbers. The source for this data is compete.com which is free and public, and while I think this offers reasonable relative positioning (who is getting more traffic than others), it doesn’t provide great absolute numbers. I’m looking into better sources for a future list (Alexa, DoubleClick Ad Planner, Quantcast etc.).
If you would like to provide Google Analytics data on your unique traffic for August 2010, you can email [email protected] I am adding changes as I get them.
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Today I’m taking a look at publications containing content about Objectivism, to see just how much they’re being read online. This idea of ranking websites by traffic comes from Marcelo Calbucci, the creator of Seattle 2.0 and the Seattle Startup Index, where I was Editor in Chief while in Seattle.
Some of these sites are about Objectivism with a capital “O”, endorsed and aligned with the Ayn Rand Institute, while others are not. What I’m interested in here is finding out who is most effectively reaching the Objectivist audience, whether aligned with ARI or not. Like them? Hate them? Take note, these are the facts — these are the people winning the hearts and minds of those who take interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand and related ideas.
All stats below are provided by compete.com and are for the month of August 2010. I did not include any site with less than 1,000 monthly uniques and were not able to get stats for blogs hosted on wordpress, blogspot, etc.
Popular Objectivism Related Websites
- Ayn Rand Institute – 48,886 uniques (this is down 43% from a year ago)
- Capitalism Magazine – 21,807 uniques
- The Objective Standard – 19,076 uniques *provided by author
- Diana Hsieh – 15,272 uniques
- Sense of Life Objectivists – 13,097 uniques *provided by author
- NobleSoul.com – 11,983 uniques
- Ayn Rand Lexicon – 9,691 uniques
- The Atlas Society (The Objectivist Center) – 8,800 uniques
- RebirthofReason.com – 7,937 uniques
- Ayn Rand Bookstore – 6,846 uniques
- The Atlasphere (the dating site) – 6,684
- ObjectivismOnline – 6,647 uniques
- Forum 4AynRandFans.com (Betsey Speicher)- 6,110 uniques
- Leonard Peikoff – 6,002 uniques
- Paul Hsieh – 5,344 uniques
- Mudita Journal – 4,954 uniques
- ObjectivistLiving.com – 4,708 uniques
- The Undercurrent – 4,040 uniques
- The Ayn Rand Center – 3,721 uniques
- Ayn Rand Center TV – 2,679 uniques
- The New Clarion – 2,471 uniques *provided by author
- Nathaniel Branden – 2,430 uniques
- Trey Givens – 1,815 uniques *provided in comments
- Erosophia by Jason Stotts – 1,584 uniques *provided by author
- Randex.org – 1,512 uniques *provided by author
- Free Colorado by Ari Armstrong – 1,440 uniques
- The Intellectual Activist – 1,424 uniques
- Capitalism.net (George Reisman) – 1,191 uniques
- Danielle Morrill (this site) – 1,081 uniques *provided by author
Interesting People/Sites who don’t make the cut (but we hope you will next time): HBList.com, AndrewBerstein.net, Yaron Brook, The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism, Anthem Foundation, Amy Mossoff, John McCaskey, The Objectivist, ARI Watch, Ellen Kenner, Objectivist Answers
Some comparison sites (suggested by various people as having similar target audiences):
- Huffington Post – 13,631,093 uniques
- Daily KOS – 1,068,820 uniques
- Heritage Foundation – 523,361 uniques
- Michelle Malkin – 488,281
- Von Mises Institute – 337,278 uniques
- Cato Institute – 200,254 uniques
- Ann Coulter – 190,400 uniques
Efficient Distribution of Ideas
I’ve talked a lot privately about my frustration with Objectivism’s lack of penetration into the mainstream, especially online where the barrier to entry is a lot lower than in traditional mainstream media. My gut told me we could be doing more than a bunch of rarely updated blogs, websites that look like they were designed in the early 1990s, the press releases. Where’s the discussion, the punditry, the passion? I hadn’t actually looked at the numbers, but they bear out what I expected… the early adopters and core supporters of Objectivism are reading… but where is everyone else. Assuming there is a lot of crossover in the readership of the sites I listed above, the total audience is probably less than 100,000 uniques a month.
It’s not like we’re reaching new heights either. The Ayn Rand Institute has seen sufficient decline in traffic over the past year.
There are a lot of tactics available online to build awareness for ideas, start conversations, educate, spread content, etc. I hope you find this information interesting, and maybe see this as an opportunity to promote ideas yourself through popular channels like your own blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you know of any Objectivist oriented sites/blogs you like to read let me know, I’ll add them to the list.
Other Writing About Objectivism
Staying the Course: ARI 25 Years Later
Simple Tactics to Get Started with Activism